*SPOILERS* Fight as X Needs serious

So, this has happened a few times now. First there was the Alphinaud fight, then there was Y\\'Sthola, Lamitt, and just completed Thancred\\'s fight against Ran\\'Jit.

They all suffer from similar problems: They take you right of your character\\'s story, which would be fine for me if not for the second problem, they\\'re boring and have no real stakes. Alphinaud just gets returned to the group, Y\\'Shtola gets hit on, and Thancred\\'s felt like he shouldn\\'t have even been there.

I love Thancred and Y\\'Shtola, don\\'t get me wrong on that, but both of their fights were just completely empty, and the fight mechanics were just frustrating for how utterly uninteresting they are. You spend both fights button mashing a single attack, and moving slightly to avoid really obvious patterns, then throw an occasional heal. If the fights were at least short, that would be a bit more excusable, but it feels like they were massively padded out, and the solution is pretty much the same each time: Keeping spamming the attacks until you unlock whichever game ending ability you\\'ve been assigned.

I\\'d have rather even had a cutscene fight, where I at least get to watch some decent action or something.

Y\\'Shtola\\'s probably annoys me more, since you literally get pulled out mid-duel to do it, and your character concludes the duel off camera. Alphinaud\\'s and Lamitt\\'s made a certain basic sense, since there was no other way to participate otherwise.

Thancred, though.... Why\\'d they do him dirty like that? Seriously, I did NOTHING in that cutscene. And there was no reason for me to be there personally. Thancred could\\'ve gone, left me to fight Ran\\'Jit, and I see the scene through the Echo. It could\\'ve even added emotional weight as Thancred has to accept Minfilia is gone, and say his goodbyes. I mean, come on, they had an open shot to kick my heart in the dick, and wussed out on it.

Thancred already went through the "accepting Minfilia is gone" thing, or rather that he has to let her go. He's come to that acceptance by the time we get on the trolley and is prepared to fight Ran'jit to ensure that not-yet-Ryne can get to the Oracle, and he's at peace with it as he lies dying afterwards - not that he actually died in the end, but the scene played out as if he would. There was plenty of emotional weight there.

More often I've seen people with the opposite frustration: that Thancred's big moment fighting Ran'jit couldn't be a proper victory because the final showdown had to be with the WoL, even though Thancred is the one with all the emotional investment in that conflict.

Not everything has to be done by our character. Some of the roleplaying sections are more for novelty, like Y'shtola's, but it made sense for Thancred to be the one in that fight.

Personally I was kind of glad that I got to beat Ranjit. When you fight him in Lakeland as yourself, and he basically beats you(despite not even being able to reduce me by half HP since I was DRK) that was enough to make me want to be the one to put him in his place. I would have been fine if it'd been Thancred though, especially since it seemed like he was gonna snuff himself out in the process.

As for why the skill selection is boring by most, I think it's because none of the skills are dramatic or powerful. You're stuck at one or two attacks so that people don't have to completely learn a new job just to win the story instance.

And for the Y'shtola fight. Well, your duel with Sadu had concluded. You beat her at her finest. The cutscene that leads into Y'shtola's fight is meant to be understood as running concurrent to your duel. That was my take on it anyway. I haven't done it in a while.

I personally hate these "duties." One was so impossible to complete that I had to ask someone else to do it for me. It's not right to throw you onto a class you never played before and cripple you with 2-3 skills and crazy hard things to fight.

I dislike these fights too. Knowing they’re scripted I know that the A.I. cheats. The outcome has no effect on the story and the only purpose the fight has is slowing me down from the end game since I can’t skip it.
Why can’t they make those moments into a action movie?

Im glad the Devs added a easy mode so the fight moves along much faster. Wish they would add a skip fight button because when you get to the next cutscene you didn’t really miss anything in the fight that is important to the plot. It just slowed you progress in the story, like a speed bump. If the fights had any story changing value I would love to do them. Maybe based on how well you perform or if you decide to spare/kill someone have an effect on the region/prices of goods/conversions. Just any answer the WOL gives it has no change to the direction the story heads. Maybe your actions in battle bring certain recruits to your squadron/grand company. If you do evil acts evil type of people befriend you. Maybe your aura changes in battle and the unique gear you get is lighter or darker based on your choices. Perhaps even the towns on your screen become more broken or darker based on your actions. The warm hearted NPCs become darker or get replaced by monsters, but still perform the same tasks. Maybe the unique gear they sell is based on the players light or dark path.

My biggest issue with these is that they usually like to throw an instant death mechanic in at the end of them. Sure it's usually telegraphed enough that you can figure out what the game wants you to do to survive but if you don't or if you catch on too late you have to do the entire boring mess all over again. And god forbid you miss it more than once. Ugh.