Final Fantasy XII problem boss fight

carbonkid

Im i think close to half way through the game and was finding some of the bosses a challenge but would beat them by second or third try but im up against Mateus, who is the final boss in the stilshrine of miriam before i get the sword, and those ice elements she summons are killing me before i can even start kicking her butt.

I know i can beat her if i can get rid of those ice element, if anyone can help me be really cool. Btw i have two ice shields im using on vaan and ash.

Retr0gamer

I didn't have ise shields and was at very low levels when I took this boss on. The best way is to just keep casting thundara on all the ice elements until they are all dead. Don't worry about Mateus reflecting the thundara at you. As long as you don't target Mateus directly then the damage will be minimal. After the ice elements are dead the battle is simple. Mateus should succumb rapidly to physical attacks. At this point in the game you should have gotten the golden amulets. Get 6 of them and equip them on everyone. You should be trying to get all the license augmentation upgrades that boost magic, HP etc. This helped me a lot later in the game since I didn't need to do any levelling up except for the last boss and I could have taken him if I had bubble at the time.

carbonkid

I only have the first level of thurder, not sure about any golden amulets. Will have to wait till i get home later to play the game again but you recommend going back to the Mt Bur-Omisace village to get thundara or using the save crystal to travel back to Rabanastre? Have one time stone on me.

Retr0gamer

You will definitely need thundara. You can get more teleport stones by taking an airship anywhere and going to the shop on the airship.

AnCapaillMor

Dude in the bazaar also sells teleport stones. Mateus kicked my ass first time too.

Retr0gamer

Only if you have done enough hunts.

It might be worth doing a few hunts so you can get bubble. I didn't do any levelling up and didn't need it (but had some challenging boss fights all the same) except for the last boss. Be warned that it could make the game very easy.

mowd

Just get enough gil until you can buy thundara. It should be easy after that.

Mario007

Dude if you have a good chain of quickenicks it should be enough instead of thundara. I didn't have it either and was on a very low level. It was only after this boss i realized that i needed to level up.
Anyway you should try to use a good few quickenicks to get one of those great quickenincks at the end. A chain of ten should be enough for the icy bastards to finally die.

carbonkid

Retr0gamer wrote:

You will definitely need thundara. You can get more teleport stones by taking an airship anywhere and going to the shop on the airship.

Cheers man your right about thundara. Bought it in the near village. Knock the crap out of them with a chain quickening and finished what was left with thundara ^_^

Mario007

carbonkid wrote:

Cheers man your right about thundara. Bought it in the near village. Knock the crap out of them with a chain quickening and finished what was left with thundara ^_^

if i were i'd train around doing some hunts at the moment, other bosses will only be harder...

carbonkid

A few of my crew are still in the teens...one more boss before heading off on a few more hunts to level em up.

Mario007

carbonkid wrote:

A few of my crew are still in the teens...one more boss before heading off on a few more hunts to level em up.

To be honest i never trained my other people besides Ashe, Vaan and Basch. I just got them quickenings in case of emergency....it's too much of a pain in the ass to train them all...

Retr0gamer

I never bothered training anyone, just made sure everyone was at the same level. Had no trouble beating the bosses other than the last one and all I needed there was bubble.

sme

i did it the other way, only using 3 chars. do you think that this game was too easy?

personally, i think it is. on the back of x-2, which no offence intended was made for girls and children, not ff fans. ok, there was ff-xi but that is a mmo and so doesn't really count.

i thought x was tough after the game was complete, you needed to do some serious leveling to beat the dark aeons. and vii, i thought that was satanic when i played it, the amount of grinding i had to do to finish was unbelievable, even with a walkthrough.

this was way to easy, i'm after picking up iii for the ds, i'm hoping that there is some challenge in it.

Mario007

Yeah it is way easier than 10. I remember in ten after 42 hours of play i had to start again because holy on Yuna's grid was too far away...another 52 hours.
I also dont like that Vaan is given only a little space in the dialogues and so far i didn't find any of that connection between Vaan and Ashe that i was used to in other FF.

carbonkid

Mario007 wrote:

To be honest i never trained my other people besides Ashe, Vaan and Basch. I just got them quickenings in case of emergency....it's too much of a pain in the ass to train them all...

Im in same position just using those three and the others mainly for quickenings. Ashe as my main healer of course and basch as my tank. To be playing the game properly should i be leveling them up all the same? I try take some the others out on the battlefield but they get killed so easly :rolleyes:

Mario007

carbonkid wrote:

Im in same position just using those three and the others mainly for quickenings. Ashe as my main healer of course and basch as my tank. To be playing the game properly should i be leveling them up all the same? I try take some the others out on the battlefield but they get killed so easly :rolleyes:

yeah i know what you're saying. I use bash as my warrior who can easily turn into an archer. Vaan is a bit of healer, he has a summoning as is good in fights, while ashe is my healer and of course has the summonings.

Retr0gamer

If you don't do any levelling up and level up all characters equally the game presents a decent challenge without being impossible. The boss fights are really challenging and require a lot of strategy to beat. I feel a lot of people ruin the FF games for themselves by levelling up. Many of the boss fights in FFX were extremely tough requiring a lot of tactical judgement and strategy to beat. However this is completely lost to people who levelled up their characters.

Mark Hamill

You can still get a decent challenge even if you level up your characters, just go for the rare hunts. My characters are all about level 65-70 and i am still having having trouble with the last two or three hunts (apparently the last hunt has 50 million health!)

sme

Many of the boss fights in FFX were extremely tough requiring a lot of tactical judgement and strategy to beat. However this is completely lost to people who levelled up their characters.

with the battle system that is used in this game you set up your gambits, target an enemy, target another enemy. i don't see what the problem is, if you don't want to bash an enemy over the head 20 times to kill it, fine, i like to do it in 10.

most of the boss/esper battle take very little tactical expertise with the exception of the chaos esper possibly.

blame the game, not the player

Retr0gamer

sme wrote:

with the battle system that is used in this game you set up your gambits, target an enemy, target another enemy. i don't see what the problem is, if you don't want to bash an enemy over the head 20 times to kill it, fine, i like to do it in 10.

most of the boss/esper battle take very little tactical expertise with the exception of the chaos esper possibly.

blame the game, not the player

All you are doing is taking boss down with a few physical attacks and maybe some curing. At lower levels you are forced into exploiting a bosses elemental weaknesses and using status effects very strategically. I like to save me the 30+ extra hours of boring level grinding just to take bosses down with no challenge and would rather a decent challenge and an interesting game. If I want to fight the optional bosses I wil go back and level up after the final boss.

Timans

sme wrote:

with the battle system that is used in this game you set up your gambits, target an enemy, target another enemy. i don't see what the problem is, if you don't want to bash an enemy over the head 20 times to kill it, fine, i like to do it in 10.

most of the boss/esper battle take very little tactical expertise with the exception of the chaos esper possibly.

blame the game, not the player

I think what you're referring to is :

"DON'T HATE THE PLAYA HATE THE MUTHA FUKING GAMEEEEEE!"

sme

Retr0gamer wrote:

All you are doing is taking boss down with a few physical attacks and maybe some curing. At lower levels you are forced into exploiting a bosses elemental weaknesses and using status effects very strategically. I like to save me the 30+ extra hours of boring level grinding just to take bosses down with no challenge and would rather a decent challenge and an interesting game. If I want to fight the optional bosses I wil go back and level up after the final boss.

from a previous ffxii tread {http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055059800&page=3}
i finished the story in 59hrs with 3 chars, that is the story only, not the hidden espers/hunts/rare game/mini games, currently at 93hrs and have only omega mark xii to kill to finish.

i only killed what was in front of me. only specifically levelled twice, judge ghis and arhiman (arhiman was a complete *not nice person*)

i honestly tried to get through this game as fast as possible. i only focused on the story element, i did not try to get ultimate weapons etc until after the final battle.

Retr0gamer

Hmm, perhaps it's because you used only 3 characters which would mean the game is broken rather than anyones tactics. I managed to finish the game at about 45 hours and didn't do a stitch of levelling up (despite my complaints of how it is necessary to beat the game :rolleyes: )

carbonkid

Retr0gamer wrote:

Hmm, perhaps it's because you used only 3 characters which would mean the game is broken rather than anyones tactics. I managed to finish the game at about 45 hours and didn't do a stitch of levelling up (despite my complaints of how it is necessary to beat the game :rolleyes: )

See dude im no where near that good...infact pretty new to the whole rpg game style. Anything to make the boss fights easier is a bonus for me! *begins leveling up Fran, Balthier and Penelo*

sme

Retr0gamer wrote:

I managed to finish the game at about 45 hours and didn't do a stitch of levelling up (despite my complaints of how it is necessary to beat the game :rolleyes: )

thats a good time, did you do many hunts?
i finished the story section with my second party at lvl 43/44 also. but they did have good weapons and armour.

Retr0gamer

Not many and then I only did them before the last boss battle to get bubble. I had trouble with the final boss and when I had bubble I tried to take him again. He was an absolute cake walk and with bubble I'm sure I could take him at around lvl.38 rather than than 44 which my party was at after a few hunts. The sages rings (half MP usage) and getting all the useful augmentations meant I didn't even have to replace party members. Weapons and armour were nothing special (basically the best I could afford).

I see that you only killed what was in front of you. I completely explored most areas and only avoided fights I hadn't a chance at winning. Only near the end of the game where I was getting really bored of how bad the battle system was for anything other than boss fights did I start taking the shortest way to my destination but fighting anything I came across.

My good time might be the due to the fact that I didn't talk to too many people in the towns. I'd usually talk to everyone in an RPG but in FFXII the towns were far too big and nobody really had anything interesting to say.

sme

i found that also about the people, you would talk to them once and they would say something dumb. then you would advance the story and talk to the same person again, and again they would say the same dumb thing.
i often thought that it would be cool if there was a cheat like gta where you could start a riot. i often felt like killing everyone in rabanastre.

seraphimvc

@OP:i beated tat ice esper in one try and low level,counld even remember how did i beat him!!but i remember i used almost the same methods walked through half of the game:get as much as Quickenings you can,3 low lvl characters first strike high chains of Quikens,and let them fight till die,changed your main 3 characters,blow Quickens again/ or keep attacking.simple:D i killed Cuchulein(that big fat green Esper) while i am about 20+levels;) )

Retr0gamer

I found quickenings too random and left your party severely handicapped. I would only use them to finish a boss off. Most bosses get a huge defence increase and get nastier when they are about to die so a quickening is a handy way of killing a rampaging boss quickly.

seraphimvc

Retr0gamer wrote:

I found quickenings too random and left your party severely handicapped. I would only use them to finish a boss off. Most bosses get a huge defence increase and get nastier when they are about to die so a quickening is a handy way of killing a rampaging boss quickly.

yes,thats why i said walked through 'half ' of the game:D Quickenings are pretty useless once you started your high rank marks...tbh,completely useless i would say....:mad: and i never used any quickens again after the lab incident...doubt they will do any good in the final battle...

my 3 'dumb' characters are Balthier,ashe,and panelo,once i get in the battle,chain quickenings(i guess i had them full 3 quickenings learnt,pretty lucky actually,everyone moved the right moves to get to their quickenings skills board very early).i can still remember i did about 18chains(yes,thats my 3rd try on him:D ),and that cost half HP of that green creepy smile esper:D summon the others 3 out,punching it till his HP left about 1/4(just in case you do a low chains quickenings);) and release your quickens.

of course ,for the later battles,after you got some powerful assistant magic(i forget what they called in FFXII,i usually call them grey magics,haste,protect,shell,lovely they have hastaga etc. this time!),use them all the time!of course,like retro said, better wear a bubble belt with you,so far another best accesory in FF series!:)

also,i found a new way of battle this time actually...you can never do that without this ADB system...and it really helps sometimes!especially for me didnt do any leveling up work but challenge some hard bosses...
use only one character on the field,equiped with a mirror mail,sage's ring is a good add-on,then you can fight many big enemies very easy(talking about marks here...especially the one you may meet on a ice field,when the weather is on blizzards,

the hp beast,Fafnir,as i can remember,powerful magic caster and physical counter

),since some enemies wont chase you to do a physical damage/unless you are pretty close to them,they cast magic to damage you instead.stand at a fine distance from them,start using their weakelemental-magic on YOURSELF(you do more damage in this way),at the mean time,all his magics will be reflected back to him...nice...:D just be careful if they have the same elemental as their attacks,you may not use this method or you can keep casting a reverse on them...

same method if you apply on your strongest character,will also do a good job.
put the stronget one first on the field,dont use any magics,(cast grey magics before you enter the battle),beating the boss about half HP,(i assume you can no longer hold that anymore),let him dies,summon the other two comes out and quickenings...
useful when you face some alone boss(he wont summon any small soldiers to assist),and he does some area damage magic(which can keep killing your low hp character easily,normally magic caster)...

it's actually a nice battle system,just get boring very easily...