FFXIII-2 Impressions: 102 hours in

[2000cc]

Just a word of advice before beginning reading this, I’ve never started a thread before, let alone attempted any sort of ‘review’ article. But all you ‘hardcore gamers’ out there should take this with a grain of salt. I’m a self confessed casual, mostly single player rpg focused player & my opinions tend to be very out of the ordinary. I loved XIII, I think Vanille is probably the best FF female character in existence.  I started playing FF at FFVI and have played every single one of the numbered FF entries multiple times, My favourite FF is FFXII and FFVII ranks in my bottom 3 FF’s. Further, I firmly believe the heyday of the western Rpg ended after the Baldurs Gate 2 (Shadows of Amn on pc) & Planescape Torment era and have gone very much downhill since (its been a constant downhill progression beginning with Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights and Morrowind imo).

So in short, My personal opinion may be far different to yours, I very much realise this and taking this into account have tried to be as objective as possible. Now about the game...

 

To say I came into Final Fantasy XIII-2 with high hopes is an understatement, I realised this left me prone to be disappointed and on some level, definitely expected to be. However after playing the game reasonably extensively I can safely say, that with minor caveats & asides this game has definitely lived up to its promise.

Beginning with the gameplay, there were a lot of complaints about Final Fantasy XIII’s linearity and the way it drove players in the beginning 5-10 hour ‘tutorial’ period. The game (XIII) deciding which characters and classes were available in which locations dependent on the aspects of story taking place at the time. XIII-2 is much different in this regard, there are far more options off the start. The environments are far more ‘wide open spaces’ than seen in X or XIII (though not as big as XII’s, but that could be a biased comment) and there are more classes, item and equipment options off the beginning. In spite of the games ‘open’ feel there is still a strong narrative running through and fans of story driven games can still get a very strong story game from simply pursuing the areas necessary to advance narrative (though even narrative advances in different ways depending on which areas you go to at which time). Square Enix has responded to the ‘linear’ complaints by introducing the ‘Historia crux’ system. Not only can you freely move between areas as the game advances, but once the narrative unlocks such things early on you can move between different timezones within the same (and every) given areas which multiplies the games potential ‘areas’ significantly. This makes for a very non linear experience as your next location you head to is entirely at the choice of the player. It is literally possible to return to the games beginning sequences when you are half way through and re fight the beginning areas monsters, alternatively (and much like XII and X-2) it is also possible to move to areas that are far beyond the parties current level of ability and get one hit killed by the areas monsters. For those who like to wander there is plenty here (including the return of towns) and all the areas feel very vibrant and alive with extremely lush environments. The far future ‘apocalypse style’ time settings can get a tad drab in line with certain major rpg’s of recent years, but the juxtaposition of them amongst the more colourful areas means the game avoids the extra dull and dreary slog feeling that commonly eventuates from games that rely completely on less colourful palettes. Besides the main game, mini games and small but fun puzzles make an appearance again with a location in game (which can be returned to at any time once discovered) dedicated to mini games almost exclusively

          

Battle works a little differently to XIII in that there are no longer monsters on the map but enemies will attack you by materialising in front of you. This initiates the ‘mog clock’, it is pretty easy to get maximum bonus from the mog clock but even so there are still some pretty challenging battles in game. Plus purposely failing the mog timer in easy fights to give the enemy an advantage makes those fights far more intense & interesting. The party is only the 2 main characters with monsters normally filling the 3^rd slot. The monster taming system works really well and feels like it combines the best aspects of Folklores & Disgaeas monster-in-the-group systems. The monsters have their own ability to level up (and use their own items you collect to level past certain points) and depending on which monsters you level up and like to use this can drastically alter the dynamics of the party in combat, again making the experience different player to player. The ‘feral link’ & monster system is actually incredibly addictive (again much like Folklores) leaving me often left wondering how a certain fight would go with different monster selection options as the monsters work into the paradigm group you are using but are specialist in one role (EG a commando monster is always a commando in all paradigms, but a great commando at that, furthermore monsters can consume other monsters absorbing their abilities, so if a 2nd tier (to your group) Commando monster gains a +10 magic bonus your main Medic monster can eat it, gaining that ability for the loss of the other monster). The bonus here is with the ability to go to most areas at any time, you can actually find out how any battle with any monster combination would pan out by simply going back to that place whenever the whim arises. The monster system makes the game more tactical in that party selection plays a large part of how you will fare in any given situation (the paradigm deck only allows 3 monsters to be 'available' over any one full set of paradigms, though you may have unlimited monsters 'not availaible to fight' in reserve). At times the tactical selection choices feel similar to trying to begin a Valkyria Chronicles level (where choices & unit distribution can make or break a fight). Beyond this the battle system is largely the same as XIII, the core mechanics are very similar although the game will now sometimes go into mildly odd (but very impressive looking) quicktime events.

           

Graphically XIII-2 looks very similar to XIII, it is still very nice and the graphics may have been polished a bit but I’m not very good at noticing that sort of thing, overall the game is (normally) bright colourful & everything looks very clear and crisp. The hair on a few characters is still a bit pixellated but most of the models, scenes & characters look amazing. To put it frankly if the graphics disappoint you in this, then they will probably disappoint you in every other game this generation.

           

The story is very well done, It is a well told story, with very good themes & messages. The story is up there with the best time travel related gaming stories including the likes of Chrono Trigger and Legacy of Kain:Soul Reaver with its share of interesting plot related narrative quirks for those who look hard enough (not to spoil any XIII-2 but an example of such quirks would be Raziel being the killer of his own mortal self in a back-in-time scene in Legacy of Kain Defiance, similarly (but not the same) interesting narrative quirks exist for those who use the Historia Crux extensively & reload a few saves playying around with different options). The only downside (imo) story wise compared to XIII is it feels as if the pacing of the tale is quicker this time round and overall the story is shorter, but it does offer (potentially a staggering number of) multiple paths and endings (though getting a 'bad' ending can be bit of a downer, but you should play this more than once), and a single playthrough should still clock in at least double the amount of narrative to a standard 'casual' (eg modern Bioware length) RPG story. Some previews I read complained that the story was too complex to understand. This must be put into perspective I feel, If you are used to the humans and/or elves and/or dwarves allying to take on the orcs/monsters and great evil sorceror/dragon as seems to be the main setting in the English speaking world, then yes, it is far more complex than that. But I was able to understand and follow this game in my (slightly rusty) second language, so that bodes well for any other person being able to follow it in their main language. The story is by no means inaccessible or overly esoteric in content but it is based in Fabula Nova Crystalis lore a lot more than XIII, so it would be advisable to get at least some idea of that before starting. Though odds are if Orcs/Elves/ Dragon stories are your standard fare and you thought XIII was convoluted, then you probably will think this one is too. If you had no trouble understanding games like FFX and FFXIII’s stories then this one should not be an issue for you. It is not as complexly layered and mired in backstory as the most intense of the Ivalice Alliance stories but it is quite a bit more complicated than the likes of the stories of FFVII and FFIX (I’ll leave the earlier FF’s alone as everyone seems to get jumpy when their stories get mentioned). But to try and give an idea I wouldn’t think the story would be hard to follow for anyone who reads at least 3 ‘mature level’ novels a year (Which I hope you do, I'm sure most of you probably have to read more than that for School or Uni anyway).

           

The characters are very interesting, Dealing with only 2 playable characters for the majority of the game and neither of them being XIII playable characters was a big risk for Square but it works well, with only having the two characters it allows almost total character development & much of the story focus to be on them. At first I found Serah to be spectacularly annoying & pitiful to the point of uselessness but she does grow into a very likeable character, as does Noel, while the Moogle in the party is super cute and adds humour to even the darkest story moments,  even Caius is very likeable, if a little bit ridiculous looking, but he does feel like an incredibly powerful bad guy, when fighting him it really does feel like those moments fighting the best of FF's bad guys (& feeling as if you are vs impossible odds as the villain is so powerful). To those expecting large playable sections with XIII’s playable characters, this game does not have them,, for the most part those charcters fulfil small playable section, or story only roles. But the new characters are so good that they hold their own alongside XIII’s favourites (for a comparison of new character legitimacy imo think the introduction of Zack Fair (as a fully developed, playable character) in crisis core by comparison to the VII characters, as he is now generally accepted by most as equal to, if not better than, the rest of the VII crew, I'm sure these two will be accpted by most alongside the existing XIII crew).
           

The last thing to mention is the games load times seem a bit longer than XIII, they are not as long as most current gens open world rpgs load times, but still longer than would be expected for an FF game. In saying that the game runs very well & I am yet to experience any bugs, crashes or framerate slowdown, the quality and production value of XIII-2 is nothing short of stellar. The soundtrack is for the most part excellent with a few very bad choices in there, One or two tracks are just awful, but the rest are up there with the best heard in FF. Hearing them in high quality surround sound helps too!

           

So there ended up being a lot more opinion in this than I would have liked, but oh well..., I unreservedly recommend this game to anyone who likes rpg games, despite a few tiny problems (imo) this game is great and in my opinion one of the best of the generation. Those who like FF but didn’t like XIII will probably like this one a lot more, Personally I think it falls short of XIII by the tiniest of margins (in saying that it is still excellent imo and would make my top 5 FF’s list) and to those who really liked XIII I think, even if you dont like this one quite as much as XIII you will still find this a worthy sequel. I would not be surprised (assuming people play it) if this FF had the greatest long term mass appeal since FFX. I’m not going to give it any sort of score here as way too much importance gets attached to such things. Apologies for any grammatical mistakes but hopefully this makes sense, playing a game in Japanese for a vast number of hours can play havoc with my English usage.

Now as its the 31st of December for me, I'm off, thanks for reading & happy new year to you all!