Master of Time

After 106 hours of gameplay, I finally got my platinum trophy for Final Fantasy XIII-2 (FFXIII-2)! My final statistics are Serah and Noel both fully developed with completely unlocked ultimate weapons (to unlock their ultimate weapons' full potential, one must collect all 160 fragments); these fully developed monsters in my party: Chichu (commando), Grand Behemoth (ravager), Flanitor (medic), Yakshini (synergist), Silver Chocobo (sentinel), Black Chocobo (saboteur); captured these rare monsters (I didnt fully develop them due to better choices for my party): Twilight Odin, Omega, Don Tonberry, Gigantuar, Cactuarina, Rangda, Nanochu and many others; 100% filled bestiary, 100% explored all areas, 713000~ gil (I have a stable means of farming gil easily via chocobo racing) and a stable means of farming high-tier monster materials.

Now that I've completely finished FFXIII-2, I can say that the post game is a lot more enjoyable than the first playthrough, especially once you have fully developed Serah and Noel's crystarium, have a stable income and some strong monsters. Also, this is something I should have realised long ago. Always play on Normal difficulty whenever you are ready. As far as I can observe, the only difference in difficulty is that monsters have less HP on Easy mode. Their stats and damage potential are unaffected. Also, playing on Easy severely hampers your item drop rate (but monster capture rate is unaffected).

A couple of notes on the last few trophies I obtained today.

• Saddle Sore: If you haven't been using chocobos regularly throughout the story like me, I suggest you find all 160 fragments and obtain the Clock Master fragment skill from the Mystic at Serendipity ??? AF. Set Clock Master to High-speed and ride a chocobo in circles in the Archlyte Steppe ??? AF for a while. Dismount from your chocobo whenever you think you should have done 10000 steps. If the trophy pops after a few seconds, congratulations! If not, mount your chocobo and do a few more laps and dismount again later. I only used chocobos whenever they were absolutely necessary to proceed with the story or sidequests so with Clock Master on High-speed I took 30 minutes of chocobo riding to get the Saddle Sore trophy.
• Beast Tamer: Set these fragment skills: Clock Master to High-speed, Battlemania to Attract tougher enemies, Monster Collector to Obtain more monster crystals, Encounter Master to More enemies. Now run around in the grassy area in Bresha Ruins 100 AF until a space-time distortion appears. This is Don Tonberry. REMEMBER TO SET CLOCK MASTER BACK TO NORMAL SPEED BEFORE YOU ENGAGE DON TONBERRY! If you have a fully developed party with strong monsters, you should have no problem defeating Don Tonberry before the first stagger ends. Try to finish Don Tonberry off with a Feral Link to boost capture rate as it is quite hard to capture him even with Monster Collector. Difficulty does not affect capture rate so feel free to set it to Easy (but he should not pose any threat even on Normal). I captured Don Tonberry on my fifth encounter with him. Using the fragment skill setup I mentioned earlier, I was able to encounter Don Tonberry 6 times out of 8 battles in that location. Battlemania seems to greatly boost Don Tonberry's encounter rate in the grassy areas of Bresha Ruins 100 AF
• Anomalous: To get the secret ending to trigger, you must have watched all 8 other paradox endings (if you have 8/8 paradox ending fragments, you have done so). Now this is very important. SET PARADOX SCOPE TO EXPLORE NEW POTENTIAL HISTORIES BEFORE YOU ENGAGE THE FINAL SERIES OF BOSS BATTLES! I forgot to turn on Paradox Scope before fighting the final set of bosses in Academia 500 AF and didn't trigger the secret ending. As a result, I had to turn on Paradox Scope and replay the entire set of battles. More annoying than hard, really. Unlike the paradox endings, the final set of bosses do not get buffed when Paradox Scope is turned on. Enjoy destroying Jet Bahamut with your overpowered party! ^_^ 
• Fair Fighter: There is no easy way to go about this. Using the same fragment skill setup I mentioned for Beast Tamer, you should be able to encounter the space-time distortion that is Raspatil extremely frequently in the Ashensands area of Oerba 400 AF. I encountered Raspatil on first try with that setup   and right after I got the trophy I encountered him again while running back to Chocolina so I'm not sure of the actual encounter rate, but it must be incredibly high with that setup. REMEMBER TO SET CLOCK MASTER BACK TO NORMAL SPEED AND DIFFICULTY TO NORMAL BEFORE YOU ENGAGE RASPATIL! If you are using the right strategy (found on ps3trophies.com) and have a fully developed party including a fully developed synergist monster with Bravega and Faithga (I had a level 70 Yakshini with 9500~ HP, 700~ strength, 800~ magic, 26% resist physical damage and all buff spells learnt), Raspatil should be quite manageable on Normal.