I'm not sure what the score means, but the stars affects the chance of rarer loot drops.

I'm wondering what party everyone uses for the most part. I am using Fang, Lightning and Hope usually.

I like Lightning, Sazh and Vanille. Covers all possible combinations.

Lightning, Fang and Sazh.

Just unlocked chocobo riding yesterday!

I use whatever party the game tells me to -- I'm only on chapter 4!

I usually use the same, sometimes I'll switch out Vanielle for Hope as well, sometimes it's nice to just have two synergists.

There must be something more to weapon upgrading as I've had my bonus multipliers disappear on me! Upgrading weapons is frustrating in this game, haven't even bothered upgrading past level 3 and i'm on chapter 10 now. I guess I'll upgrade again when it gets a bit tougher.

Do you guys often use synergists? Haven't used that at all, or sentinel.

Sentinel becomes very necessary later on.

That's my team, too.

the thing that pisses me off the most about the game is the AI. not the enemy AI, but your own teams AI. many times you'll have someone with curing ability curing a person who is higher than another member. sometimes that happens because the person gets attacked before cure can be cast, but still, the computer should always target the member with the lowest HP no matter the circumstances. fucking dying in this game left and right because of that stupid little issue.

the other thing that pisses me off is that enemies can still attack you when you change paradigms. you'd think they'd give you a second to transform so you can start up again, but i've had plenty of times where i've died because i was transforming into some medic related paradigm and died due to attack during the switch.

I use Lightening, Fang and Hope and it has worked out well so far. I'm currently in Gran Pulse working on getting 5 stars in all of those Cieth Stone missions. It can be a real bitch at times.

so what's up with all those metal type elements you get but can't use? i'm near the end of the game (chapter 12) but i've yet to be able to use those to upgrade anything. do they only work for certain types of weapons/accessories?

When you have fully upgraded a weapon to the star level you can use those special components to change the weapon into a higher level weapon. This new weapon may at first have slightly lower stats than the fully upgraded one but it can be upgraded a lot higher. Once this weapon is upgraded fully you can use a special component to turn it into an ultimate weapon.

ahhhh thanks.

another thing is i'm going back doing some missions in. in central expanse there are those circle jump things that are green, not the typical blue. you can't jump on them. what's the deal with that?

Is there a trick to it? Because I have a couple of * weapons but the 4 or 5 "transformation" items I have are grayed out when I go to the upgrade screen.

i just did one. you need some of those special upgrade items. all those weird ones that sound like precious metals. if it's greyed out, you don't have the right thing to upgrade that particular item.

I believe the yellow circles are places you can go when you have a chocobo.

ahhh, well i didn't get a chocobo. guess i gotta look that up.

I changed to the Lightning, Fang and Hope team, too. I use Delta Attack and Mystic Tower, with Solidarity and it works great.

Anyone else complete the game yet?

I've played most of the FF games on the home consoles, this has by far the best battle system of them all.

The story was above average, but others were better in my opinion.

As far as the characters were concerned only Light and Fang were not annoying to me.

Love the upgrade system but...

So is there a trick to the weapon upgrades? Is there any way to do better than picking a random component and adding a random number of them to my weapon of choice?

Not really, after time you'll discover what gets you the most for the least, and you can buy from the shops accordingly.

Money is hard to come by in this game (at least for the majority of it) so you'll have to choose what you buy wisely.

The general rule is organic compounds will increase the multiplier, but give little EXP.

Synthetic compounds will give you the most EXP, but decrease the multiplier.

Because they're relatively cheap compared to synthetics I always bought a good supply of organics, and always kept the multiplier at x3 before I applied synthetics to any weapon or accessory.

I just finished this, it took me 49 hours, and I haven't done any of the side missions yet. This was a lot of fun.

There is a trick. The Creature store (Creature Comfort is it?) has alot of stuff that's 150 and 80 gil. A few of the 80 gil items are worth 14 towards the multiplier to get a 200% bonus. A few 150 gil items are worth 21 towards it.

For example, buy 24 Diabolic Tails (the multiplier to get to 200% is 500-501, hence the number of tails needed), and use them all on a weapon or accessory, and you get the instant 200% bonus. Then you use high end items (from the Garage store) and keep using them til the multiplier starts falling.

Then just use a few more Tails or bones or any cheap component to raise it back to 200%.

Holy crap that wide open area is tough. My new rule is to not fight anything that is bigger than my character lol