So my progress in XIII is going solid.
Lake Bresha is by far one of the coolest looking areas as far as gaming is concerned. It's just a beautiful area and even the crystal fire looks cool. There's some more nice character beats between Light and Snow. Their story arc I think is one of the better parts of the game. It's nice to see the extremal optimistic character be full of hot air and yet be told that. Still it's quite obvious the Light is just jealous. She's so hard up on being responsible and only dealing with what seems factually possible. I of course like some of Szah's moments as well I always like the rational and clear headed character. Hope is pretty annoying here as he hasn't found any resolve and Vannille is just super cheerful. I don't dislike Vannile. I find her cute, not in a creepy "i want to protect moe kind of way", just cute in the way she looks and animates. Obviously, I know whats shes about, but its still nice to see her unsubtly switch between worrisome and cheerfulness.
Sadly most of the gameplay in Lake Bresha is pretty boring as enemies don't require much at all. But I guess that's to be expected.
The Vile Peaks is after and this isn't my favorite area visually wise. It looks very broing and the texture work he is not the best in the game. Still, if offers some solid explanation and backstory of the world of XIII. You get to know the relationship of Pulse and Coccon more and you understand how something by Pulse got from Pulse to Bodum. So the begining of the game and why the Purge happen makes more sense. People complained that a lot of XIII's areas feel superfluous and that people's actions in them could have taken place anywhere. Where Vile Peaks is one of the few areas that actually feels like it explains parts of the world and gives context to a good portion of whats going on.
As far as characters go. Light is still stand-offish, but you at least by now have seen why she got on the train to Purge town anyway. You get a good sense that right now she doesn't really care about anything and that's she's kind of desperate, not really thinking things through. She's just like Snow, but he is at least optimistic about things. Szah and Vannille start their partnership which is also a great part of XIII. They both are characters that don't really know what to do and are just moving along. Of course Vannille has a bit more going on. There is some funny comedy between them as well so that's nice. Hope is still kind of lame, but he's showing signs of being better.
As far as gameplay is concerned the Vile Peaks is pretty fun. More interesting enemies and since you are forced into using your party different ways, you feel the need to explore the other roles. Here I am constantly switching between set-ups and it's pretty fun. There's also a short minigame involving Hope and a Dreadnaught. They really should have turned this into a minigame somewhere in the game. I believe there should have been a city on Pulse to do stuff in and hey maybe this minigame reappears there.
Next up is the all Light and Hope area of Gapra Whitewood, which of course looks cool. But this area isn't all that great. Beyond the joke of follow the lights, it's mostly about Hope finding some resolve to kill Snow. It's not all that interesting. Plus the area goes on a little too long and most of the combat is Just switching between Com/Rav and Rav/Rav. I don't think I did much else.
Anyway next up is the visually awesome Sunleth Waterscape
and that's where the stream is continuing