baylaust Reviews: Final Fantasy XIII-2

[baylaust 2,531]

I enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII. It wasn't the best FF I've played, that title still goes to FFX, but I liked it. It did have its share of flaws, though, and those flaws were enough to ignite a firestorm in the FF fanbase. I must say, Final Fantasy fanboys are among the WORST fanboys out there. Almost nowhere else will you find a fandom that demands either remakes or remasters of older titles, or anything to make sure the series remains as STAGNANT as possible. So despite the largely negative fan response to FFXIII, Square Enix decided to make their second direct sequel to a FF game, their first since FFX-2 (anyone who says Final Fantasy XIII was the worst Final Fantasy hasn't played X-2. Fact.), with Final Fantasy XIII-2. Does this sequel correct the mistakes of its predecesor? I've beaten it, and here's my review.

 

Keep in mind that this is MY review of the PS3 copy. Your opinion may very well differ from mine.

 

Story

The story takes place 3 years after the events of Final Fantasy XIII. The main protagonist of the first game, Lightning, has disappeared without a trace, and everyone believes her to either be dead or transformed into crystal... all except her sister, Serah Farron. One day while living her life, Serah meets a young man named Noel Kreiss, who claims to have been sent there on a mission from Lightning. Noel then takes Serah on a journey through time to fix the Time Paradoxes throughout the timeline, find Lightning, and bring her back, all while a mysterious man named Caius does everything in his power to stop them.

 

This game's story is the exact opposite of Final Fantasy XIII's. XIII just sort of threw you into the middle of everything without any form of explaination, and if you wanted to know the whole story, you had to spend an hour looking through all the datalog entries. It basically had TOO much story. XIII-2, however, certainly would have benefited from a stronger story. The opening and climax of the game are the only real moments where you feel like things are flowing storywise, but everything through the middle just feels like you're moving from one setpiece to another. It feels like you wade through a few hours of filler before getting to something interesting. Despite the game having a strong climax, I will say this: whether you liked XIII or not, the ending will PISS you off.

 

Now while this game features everyone from the main cast of XIII appearing at least once in some whay, shape, or form, the main cast for this game relies heavily on some new characters. Noel is a solid new protagonist, and definitely something I want to see more of in Final Fantasy. He isn't a whiney, overly cocky brat, and he isn't an overly serious / emo douche. He's likeable, and gets just enough time of development for you to get attached, and still be interesting. The game's new villain, Caius, quickly became one of my favourite FF antagonists in a long time (not since Kefka in FFVI).

 

Gameplay

Of course, what makes a game is NOT its story, but its gameplay. And the gameplay is Final Fantasy XIII-2's shining feature. Virtually every complaint people had with XIII's gameplay has been fixed here. Gone are the linear corridors that composed 85% of the game, replaced with large, expansive environments with branching paths and NPC interaction sites. Gone are the 'sidequests' of XIII ("kill this monster" about 50+ times), replaced with a variety of NPC-given sidequests spanning fields, and sometimes timelines, and all providing rewards for their completion.

 

Combat has been largely unchanged, still making use of the ATB (active time battle) system and the Paradigm Shift system, but the changes that HAVE been made work to its advantage. Shifting roles takes place MUCH faster now, so the flow of combat isn't interupted, making battles much more fast paced. A 'monster catching' mechanic has been added, replacing your third party member slot with monsters you catch by defeating them in battle. It's a surprisingly deep system that works really well. The dreaded 'Auto-Battle' system is back, but I didn't find myself using it as much as I did in XIII. Before you could breeze through EVERY battle with Auto-Battle, but I found that didn't work anymore. Going through my Abilities and choosing the best options through experimentation worked better, and with the rating system at the end of battles being MUCH harsher this time around, it feels a lot more rewarding to get that 5 star ranking, figuratively and literally.

 

The game's story is about 20-30 hours, pretty short for a Final Fantasy game, but there is enough content to keep you busy for a LONG while. There are dozens of sidequests to be found, minigames to play, and secret endings to discover. Take my word: these will take a LONG time to accomplish, so prepare for a 50+ hour experience if you're a completionist.

 

Presentation

XIII-2 runs on the same engine as XIII did, so the visuals haven't been upgraded to any noticeable degree. However, they also decided to use the in-game engine for their cutscenes a lot more, which seeing as how the graphics still look great, overall works to the game's advantage. Since this was a smaller project, there tends to be a rather frequent amount of framerate dropping, but most of it takes place in cutscenes. It's noticeable, but not horrible either.

 

This game easily has the most diverse soundtrack of any FF game to date, featuring everything from orchestral, vocal, heavy metal, and even rap. People have been divided on the soundtrack, but overall, I really liked it. It has quite a set of memorable tunes, and what is easily the most hilariously bad song I've ever heard in a Final Fantasy game, and I mean that in a good way ("Crazy Chocobo". Look it up.)

 

Voice acting has always been pretty hit-or-miss with Square, but I found that the voice acting in this game was pretty darn good. Every character is given a strong performance, especially Noel's voice actor and Caius's voice, done by Liam O'Brien (Liam O'Brien is a badass. Fact.)

 

Verdict

Alright, so I'm deciding to go with a different rating system from here on out. I think that it's way too easy to misinterperate number scores (8.5 or lower pretty much means 'don't buy it' to gamers now), so I'll be going with a more understandable scoring system from here on out. From highest to lowest:

 

AWESOME

Great

Good

Meh

Bad

Garbage

KILL IT WITH FIRE

 

On that note, I thought Final Fantasy XIII-2 was:

 

Great

The game's story could have been better, there were some framerate problems, and the end sucked, but on the other hand, the gameplay has been so radically improved, with a great opening and climax and a strong new cast and overall presentation. It's still not a perfect game, and it all comes down to what you value most. But like I always say, gameplay is the most important part of a game, so overall, this is definitely an improvement over Final Fantasy XIII. If you liked the first one, you'll love this one. If you're skeptical about buying it, maybe give it a rental first, but don't be like everyone else and give this game a bad rep that it really doesn't deserve.

 

So, do you have Final Fantasy XIII-2 for the PS3 or 360? What did you think? Was I too harsh or too leniant? Did I miss anything? Let me know.

 

baylaust out.

[AJTREY 70]

The multiple endings is a bitch

[Kelvy 60]

The multiple endings is a bitch

 

There's only one true, canon, CG ending though...

[Robbie the Wise 5,050]

Great review.

[AnsemTheWise 1,114]

I was about to do this! I'm watching the freakin' credits!

 

Anyways, I loved it. Although the ending only drove a knife into my chest. How can I sleep now?!

[Nikolasvanitas 358]

i finished FFXIII-2 and i have to say the gameplay has improved from ff13,the paradigm shift change faster,its easier to win fights without having to spend hours for staggering ,there is a lot of exploration-i found myself going back to places i have finished and checking for sidequests or new monsters,the music was really nice and it was a nice change from the traditional square enix music though i kinda miss the classic square music and the new vilain seemed much better and more badass than the old one Barthadelus,he had a more interesting backstory and more scenes and interaction with the main characters(Noel looks like Sora admit it )

The only thing i didnt like was the when the storyline got confusing with traveling to different time periods and revisiting areas but it wasnt so bad because the gameplay was pure fun

So in my opinion FFXIII-2 is a really fun game to play,one that i really enjoyed and couldnt put the controller down and i tottaly agree with baylausts opinion about the game

[lizzie1238 538]

I'll wait for this to go down to $20, then I'll pick it up.

[teh lazy prince Xylek 1,559]

i love 13-2 its awesome

[P50L 610]

I want a PS3. Grr, Guess I gotta get used to walkthroughs.

 

 

Why didn't they remake Final Fantasy VIII* yet?

[hatok 6,413]

The multiple endings is a bitch

 

The 'multiple endings' are just what if scenarios, most of which can't be seen until the end of the game. Basically, they're all 'What if they had killed this enemy now instead of running', or what if they had said no instead of yes'

[AJTREY 70]

The 'multiple endings' are just what if scenarios, most of which can't be seen until the end of the game. Basically, they're all 'What if they had killed this enemy now instead of running', or what if they had said no instead of yes'

 

Technically you guys are wrong. There's the normal ending, the paradox ending, and the secret ending. The paradox endings aside, technically there are multiple endings... and that is annoying.

[hatok 6,413]

Technically you guys are wrong. There's the normal ending, the paradox ending, and the secret ending. The paradox endings aside, technically there are multiple endings... and that is annoying.

 

That's like saying KH has multiple endings for having a secret movie at the end.

BTW, because I'm playing the game, not watching it on Youtube, I don't actually know what happens in the secret ending