FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 - THE OFFICIAL THREAD! - Now with DLC Trailer on newest Post!

[Runa216]

If anyone wants to know more about proper narrative techniques, look no farther than Final Fantasy IV: the complete Collection. I reviewed that last year as one of my first reviews for the site, and I think the high score I gave it is well deserved. (then again, I wanted to give it higher because it was the first time I'd ever played Final Fantasy IV).

The review is here in case anyone wants to see: http://gamrreview.vgchartz.com/review/47198/dissidia-012-duodecim-final-fantasy/

Anyway, in Final Fantasy IV, the characters are personified not just through the dialogue boxes, but also their gameplay styles. One way Final Fantasy XIII-2 fails is that Serah is a schoolteacher but manages to kick copious amounts of ass...which makes no sense. Her in battle and out-of battle persona are completely different and do not mix at all. Edward the Bard from final Fantasy IV is purely a support character who is a coward. While back then it would have been easy to just tell us "dude's a coward", they took it two steps farther by having his entire arc being about proving he's not a coward to the woman he loves. His cowardice is also reflected in his gameplay style, having a move right there in his list that makes him run and hide. The character is personified not just through the plot but through the gameplay as well (and I'm not even going to get into the other characters, almost all of which are deeper and more interesting than basically any other game character ever.) Instead we have a character that does things for seemingly no reason at all, with weak motivations and a complete disconnect from even herself one moment to the next.

with the amount of money they spent on this AND FFXIII, there's no reason they couldn't hire someone to write a better story or at least better or more believeable character interactions. It's not hard people, you don't need an encyclopedia of exposition to get a point across, it's not effective or engaging at all.