Final Fantasy XIII - Barthandelus Boss Battle on the Paramecia

I don't usually blog on video games, but I've been playing Final Fantasy XIII lately and I got stuck on the toughest boss battle in the game so far, the Fal'Cie Barthandelus on the flying aircraft carrier Paramecia. What sucks about this boss is that traditional tactics don't work.

I read the guides and tips online, and they all recommended Lightning / Fang / Hope as your battle party, along with various Paradigms and certain accessories. I'm here to say you need more than that. Here's a breakdown of how I finally beat this sumbitch after 3 or 4 days of being stuck on him:

Paradigms:

• Lightning: Commando / Fang: Saboteur / Hope: Synergist – (Bully)
• Lightning: Ravager / Fang: Commando / Hope: Medic – (Diversity)
• Lightning: Ravager / Fang: Commando / Hope: Ravager – (Relentless Assault)
• Lightning: Medic / Fang: Saboteur / Hope: Medic – (Perseverance)
• Lightning: Medic / Fang: Saboteur / Hope: Synergist (Evened Odds)
• Lightning: Medic / Fang: Saboteur / Hope: Ravager (Variety)

Weapons and Accessories:

Lightning needs to have 2 Tungsten Bangles. Fang needs to have a Tungsten and a Silver Bangle. Hope needs to have a Tungsten Bangle and a Gold Bangle. If you do not have all of these, buy them. At some point along the way on the Paramecia there is a treasure orb containing 3000 Gil. All weapons for this battle party need to be upgraded to Level 3, and all Accessories need to be upgraded to Level 2 at least. You can upgrade them further if you want, but this is where mine were at when I kicked his ass. And if you were wondering where some of these accessories are, check your 3 non-party characters. If you are like me you previously selected to Optimize your party due to either Defensive or Offensive strategies, chances are the Gold Bangle you can't find is attached to Snow or something. Remove the good crap from the people you are not using and give them junk.

Strategy:

Set Bully as default Paradigm, and immediately throw a Librascope to get weaknesses. The trick with Barthandelus is constant pummeling. Start taking out the left and right Ailettes and Pauldrons. You want to fluidly move between Paradigms every couple of turns to reflect the current situation, but don't let him force you into defensive Paradigms for more than 2 turns (i.e. use Evened Odds few and far between, and as little as possible). Keep pummeling on him, even if only 1 of your characters is swatting at him. This may sound laughable, but it will keep him distracted from using some of his bigger attacks if you keep him busy. If you get your party's health filled up, switch to Relentless Assault. Then switch to Diversity so you can have a medic filling up your party's health while pummeling him. When you finish taking out the Ailettes and the Pauldrons, you will start the next phase of the boss fight.

The previous advice goes for the head too, until, at some point, he will start using the Destrudo attack. This attack takes a minute to charge up - use this time to switch to Evened Odds followed by Perseverance - you will need to keep debuffing/pummeling him while taking a minute to replenish your health and buffs, and then switch to Relentless Assault as soon as possible and open a can of whoop-ass on him. This is particularly useful true later in the battle - you want to cause a certain amount of damage to him while he builds up for Destrudo because it will keep him from casting Doom. You will know if you did so, because he will grunt in pain and the "Destrudo building up" sound will become higher pitched, as if you really pissed him off and he's about to drop the world on your head. Don't get scared or discouraged, just keep up with Relentless Assault. As soon as he releases Destrudo, flip to Perseverence followed by Evened Odds followed by Bully followed by Relentless Assault followed by Diversity. At this point he should start charging for Destrudo again. All you have to do is wash, rinse and repeat. At some point you will kick his ass.

A couple of notes regarding certain things stated by other strategies - I'm not going to say that they are wrong about these things, but I'm going to state that certain things are overemphasized and not really needed:

• Fang's Sentinel role - I'm not saying it's not totally needed, but it's not needed much. Most of the time Fang will be catching the brunt of his attacks anyway, and her Saboteur role is much handier for this battle than her Sentinel role. 
• Odin - 1. If Doom is cast upon you, he can resurrect you, but from what I've read your Doom counter will stop while he is summoned. I think for me that it kept counting down, but I don't remember for sure - the next night after having my ass kicked by Doom I was going to summon Odin and test to see if he would or could resurrect me if Doom was cast on me, but that night I upgraded the weapons and accessories on my party, and he never got around to casting Doom on me before I kicked his ass. 2. Odin, as strong as he is, will not chop Barthandelus down before he can kick your ass. He can resurrect you if you die, though, as I recall a battle where I summoned Odin in a suicide style attack, and when I died he resurrected me at full health and left. Handy. I died again 3 minutes later because of Doom. Yay. The upshot of it is that if you are good enough, you will not need Odin for this battle.

This battle took me like 3 or 4 days to beat, inconsistently and nonconsecutively. When I finally kicked his ass, I flipped him off and, if I could have, I would have made Snow, Sazh and Hope teabag his corpse in the forehead afterward. Too bad he doesn't die. No spoilers, but he is a recurring boss after all. Maybe Snow, Sazh, and Hope will learn Teabaga before the last boss fight with his ass. Anyway, that's all...