The Mog Blog

Sometimes DLC comes in a nice neat little package that doesn’t really need a full review. This is where The DLC Downlow comes in, a feature detailing the small DLC bits that serve to add a snack to your game without downing a full meal.

Final Fantasy XIII-2′s monster system is a very interesting plot. Not only does it allow Square Enix to give people that old monster collecting and raising addiction but it also allows them to add in a way to rake in more money from you. In this case, any monster or character they can think of can be added as a party member. In this case, the Final Fantasy XIII-2 Lightning & Amodar battle serves to do that: Allowing you access to Lightning and Amodar as party members but not without a little challenge.

The DLC adds a special battle scenario in the Coliseum that allows you to fight Lightning and Amodar as a duo. The battle starts off with a very short fight with Lightning and then Amodar will appear to continue the fight with Lightning. The battle itself is a rather rough one so being ready and properly leveled will only help you. Personally, I’ve done this fight with maxed out characters with a Chichu with over 1k strength and while it wasn’t a completely smooth fight, it’s not impossible in the slightest.

What you will need to do before going into this is simply treat it as any boss fight. Having your paradigms with all Commando, all Ravager, all Sentinel and all Medic as four different sets will help you more than using any hybrids. Saboteur I found to be a bit pointless and of course if you want to buff yourself with Synergist, you can do that too. The only real dynamic part about this fight is that one character will be buffed up if you kill the other. Just pick one, Ravager to build chain, Commando to kill, Medic if needed. Sentinel starts kicking in once you kill one character as the other character will get the “Limit Breached” ability which will indicate that they will do their special attack in a few seconds. Lightning will do “Army of One” which is a fairly impressive set of attacks of her just letting it on you. Amodar’s Iron Bear Claw will be very familiar to the Street Fighter fans as this move completely mimics Akuma’s Raging Demon, right down to the leap, the fade out with multiple hits and even a pose. You will want to shift to your Sentinel right before the animation starts. Other than that, kill them and you might get a few things.

Lightning's Stats

Of course, the real rewards are what does this bring outside of the battle and will it help you? As stated before, Lightning and Amodar can be crystallized and added to your monster list. Amodar is a Commando with a good chunk of HP while Lightning is a pretty good Ravager. Both of them already require level 5 bio monster materials and they peak out at level 13. They also already have 6 ATB and a couple of abilities, none of which really are worth mentioning. It should be noted that you cannot change their names or infuse them into other monsters but other monsters can be infused to them and they can also wear adornments. Yes, that also means that if you have it, you can have Lightning wear the Lightning Mask.

Amodar's Stats

Aside from that, both also have a rare drop from each. Amodar’s is Sergent’s Badge while Lightning’s is Lightning Cross. Both of these accessories greatly increase your Strength and Magic by 66% respectively but comes at a price of reducing your HP and putting you in constant poison. Both have 100 capacity points. This might not be very useful in anything but short farming battles or maybe at a challenge if you need a little spice in your battles.

Overall, the package of the two DLC characters and the rare drops are generally not worth it to one that already has gone through the entire game and collected all the fragments or even before then. Chichu still dominates Amodar in terms of pure damage but Amodar does have a lot of HP and being able to build around that with him acting as a bit of a tank could prove more useful. Lightning is a great Ravager but in all honesty, just the novelty of having her in your party is enough to make any fan of Final Fantasy XIII glee with delight or if you so strongly desire to have an actual human for your third party slot. The two accessory items, again, are only useful for farming or if you just want to add a little challenge to your battles. At $3.00, you’re most likely going to buy it for the novelty rather than the usefulness. I don’t see very many people beating this battle before getting into the deeper parts of the game, which is a shame because having a Lightning or an Amodar right from the get go would make things easier and their existence more meaningful.

On the plus side: Amodar’s Iron Bear Claw Feral Link button sequence is also a mimic of Akuma’s Raging Demon motion: Square, Square, Foward, X, Triangle (or if you’re on Xbox 360: X, X, Forward, A, Y).