A wise monkey once said in his review of Final Fantasy XIII, "The game was fun, but I've come to expect much more of this series. Here's hoping Square listens to their fans' feedback for the next game." With that in mind I was skeptical when they announced XIII-2. I waited until the reviews came out, finding solid 8/10s in most places. I asked a friend who'd bought it, and he said he was enjoying it. So I decided to take a gamble and picked it up recently. What's the verdict? Well...
Presentation: 10
Was there ever a doubt? This is a Final Fantasy, after all. If they did nothing else, you could always count on them to look and sound good.
There are a few flaws in the sound department. One character's voice can be a bit irritating, and a blessedly rare boss battle track that sounds like someone's murdering a camel to screamo music. Even that's not enough to detract from the overall goodness of the soundtrack though.
Story: 7?
Let me preface this by saying that there is a vague, but important spoiler in this section. It's the source of my biggest problem with this game, and might really impact your decision to buy it. I highly recommend you read it anyway. With that warning out of the way, here goes.
The game centers around Serah, former damsel in distress of the previous game, as she journeys through time with Noel (pronounced "Noll" not "No-el"), a guy from far into the future, in an effort to find out what happened to her sister, Lightning, who everyone apparently thinks was pulled into the crystal pillar along with Vanille and Fang at the end of the first game.
FFXIII-2 has an interesting take on time travel, and dodges many of the expected tropes. However, it also doesn't seem to follow its own rules sometimes as well. For example, having caused a change in the future at one point, another fellow time traveler is removed from that point because they would no longer have been called there. However, the very same thing applies to our heroes, yet they remain right there. (No, that was not the important spoiler.) A few other mostly minor things as well, but they do take away from your understanding of exactly what's going on. Speaking of which, letting you get that understanding is something XIII-2 seems bound and determined to keep you from right up until (here it comes) the ending cliffhanger. That's right, for all your time invested you'll be getting a great big "To Be Continued" before the credits roll.
Now to its credit, as cliffhangers go it certainly leaves you wondering. But that's partly because there are several story hooks and characters that are introduced and then never expanded on...in the game. Looks like they're supposed to be DLC. Yeah.
On the timeline map you'll notice 3 areas completely separate from the rest of it. These are for upcoming episodes featuring those characters, the first of which drops this month sometime, I believe. In addition there's a Colosseum you visit briefly during the game, but never have any reason to return to, unless you shell out for the Lightning and Amodor DLC that was available on release. And as another symptom of the DLC infection, the main menu holds the Outfits option which you can use to put on different costumes for your characters, but there are absolutely no alternates available within the normal game itself. Not even any unlockables. The prices of these DLCs are so far no greater than $3.00. But since they are dangling story hooks with places clearly prepared and set aside for them in game, it really feels like withheld content, whether or not it actually is.
But you know, even with this, I might still be able to overlook it since nothing that's available yet is essential to the story. I certainly don't like the idea, but I can't hold that against the game itself. The real question is whether the story continues into a XIII-3 or a DLC. I absolutely cannot recommend supporting a company that would intentionally withhold the ending of a game into DLC. It's absolutely inexcusable. So, amazingly enough I'm going to sit and hope for a sequel. But I don't think it's likely. That's why there's a question mark next to the score up there. What'll decide it is whether the game is just the next part in the story, or just a lead up to DLC. For now I'll assume the best and count that 7 into the score.
You might say to me, "Hey, the game has multiple "endings" you can go back for." But only once you complete the true ending, so none of them can be canon, nor do any of them actually brings you any true conclusion either. I sorely wish they had spent the time and resources used to make these false endings exploring those story hooks. Why didn't they? I can only assume it's because they couldn't sell the paradox endings like they can what's up for DLC.
Characters: 7
Our protagonists are all likeable, but don't develop much. Or rather, it's done in the same style as XIII and there's no real transition. Aside from them there are a few characters that really have some personality about them.
It's good that they've added in a town or two, but once again most of the people in it are blank slates you can't talk to unless they're specifically for a quest. They will randomly speak as you pass by, and it is cool how they'll respond to things you do like riding a chocobo or throwing Mog. But that doesn't give them personality since everyone will react the same way.
Gameplay:8
Much has changed for the better in this area, but they sometimes take a step back as well.
The first problem addressed is the infamous linearity of the levels. That's not to be found here. Many places have multiple routes to take, and all of them have out of the way nooks to explore and search for treasure.
Combat has remained similar to the original in most ways, but with several changes. Since the story only focuses on our two characters, the third party slot is filled by a monster. Whenever you defeat a monster there's a chance it will turn to crystal. Should this happen you get that monster as a party member (though only one of any given monster at a time). Obviously not all monsters are obtainable, but a very large number are. Each monster has it's own miniature Chrystarium that you use found/dropped materials to advance them through to level them up and make them better. You can also choose to Infuse one monster into another. This will transfer any passive abilities (HP +20%, Item Finder, etc) from one to another. This does consume the donor creature, but aside from a very few unique monsters, you can always catch another one later. If they share a role (Commando/Ravager/etc) then you can also select a number of active abilities (Thundaga, Shell, Powerchain, etc) to transfer depending on the Chrystarium level of the donor.
The problem here is that each creature only has one role and you can only put 3 in your party at a time to switch between in fights. This is less diverse than simply having a 3rd character would be since a person can have any of the 6 roles, but most of the time you won't notice a problem. It helps that you can now save up to three different sets of paradigms, and those will automatically switch in the saved creature combination as well when selected.
Each monster also has a kind of Limit Break too. As long as they're in battle their Feral Link gauge fills up. When it's full you can activate their ability at any time. There are a variety of abilities ranging from simple damage, to area damage, to healing and buffs for the party. The status of the gauge persists between battles, and it can be used as often as you like in a fight. Unlike Noel and Serah's similar abilities which can only be activated once per fight. The right monster with the right Feral Link can make all the difference in a fight.
In what I consider another waste of time and resources, you can also collect a ton of different Adornments and stick them on your monsters for a bit of personalization. Don't get me wrong, it's nice and all, but again I would much rather have had more of the more important stuff.
There has been another improvement to the paradigms, though. You can now customize them a little more by setting whether or not you want more focused or spread out attack types. By selecting a paradigm like Relentless Assault you can adjust it so that your characters will use single target attacks (like the basic Attack or Fire abilities) against single foes and make it Relentless Assault X, or if you want them to prioritize using larger area attacks (Blitz or Firaga, etc) with Relentless Assault W. A nice touch, but it doesn't go quite far enough. If they would give you the ability to simply turn off some actions like in FF12's gambit system, you could get them to focus on doing the actions you would prefer. For example, Poison is most often a waste of time (though it does have its uses rarely). Nevertheless, both the AI controlled character and your Autoselect will prioritize it over the vastly superior Imperil.
Lastly, the ATB gauge still has the same flaw as before, where increasing it just means you act most slowly since you have to wait longer for it to fill up. While you can order your character to act before it's full, the other two AI controlled ones will always wait. This could potentially lead to a lack of healing when you need it, or longer than needed battles because they wouldn't do the one or two attacks needed to finish them.
That isn't actually a major problem though because of the game's difficulty. Or rather, its lack of difficulty. It comes in two settings, but if you'd told me I was playing on Normal instead of Easy, I might not have believed you. I rarely had to scramble for a strategy during a fight. Only ever really had use for 4 paradigm slots. All through the story I died about 4 times too. It wasn't until I started to take on the few powerful monsters after the endgame that I died repeatedly. Luckily it wasn't an extreme grindfest this time to get within striking distance of them though.
The casino was a letdown. It only has two games; a slot machine and chocobo races. (Though they're quick to tell you that they'll be adding two more card games in the upcoming DLC. Sigh.) The slot machine is worse than random. In hours of playing it I never came out ahead. Worse, you're required to play it to get a Fragment, one of the game's collectables to unlock a few things. (More on that in a moment.) The fact that they had to put in a button to do all the boring stuff for you should have been a hint that it shouldn't be in the game to begin with.
The chocobo racing is much like the battle system in that you can't actually control what happens specifically. Instead you just get to pick a strategy and hope your chocobo has the stats to pull it off. The ones you race are captured in battle just like any other, or in two instances found in item boxes. Their battle stats and skills are what determine their racing abilities, so catching them in the wild and improving them like other monsters makes them better racers, and very handy combatants too. Unfortunately, you don't even get to control where you run on the boring oval track. You're assigned a position in one of the 8 slots before the race. Your chocobo will never leave that slot to try to get ahead of others either. You only really control when it uses its Boost to sprint, and even that seems broken.
In either game there's little or no skill involved. C'mon, Square. Shouldn't you have to be good at something to win instead of just hoping the numbers come up in your favor?
Collecting Fragments through story progression or doing missions here and there can result in unlocking Fragment Skills. Unfortunately, only a couple are useful. Ones that might be good are rendered useless due to when you get them. For example, Field Killer lets you use the overworld attack button to kill monsters instead of just starting fights with them. But you only get it after completing the Bestiary, meaning you've killed every boss and monster. In all likelihood, it's the last one you'll get since completing the Bestiary requires finishing all the paradox endings as well. There are some handy ones which increase or decrease the monster spawn rate as you want, or increase the spawn rate of rare monsters. But they're outnumbered by the useless ones.
Replay Value: Low.
Since you can rewind time as much as you want in any area after completing it and finding an item to do so, there's little reason to ever start from the beginning again. You'll likely skip most cutscenes and conversations too. The adventurous types will likely have found and explored every area to it's fullest as well. Plus, you know, the ending thing.
Overall: 8...for now.
I'm disappointed by the DLC shenanigans and the lack of a true ending. A lot's riding on where they go from here. They definitely listened to the feedback about the last game. Let's just hope they listen this time too.
