Final Fantasy XIII-2 review

After the fanbase-breaking Final Fantasy XIII, it actually came as a surprise that Square Enix made a sequel to it.

However, they made promises to fix what was considered bad design decisions in the previous entry.

The question is: Does the oddly titled game fix what was broken?

It does. But unfortunately, it also tried to add too much, and fix what ain't broken.

Storyline

The game picks up three years after the end of Final Fantasy XIII, but for some reason, Lightning has disappeared and many people believe she had sacrificed herself along with Vanille and Fang to save Cocoon.

Except Serah, who is the only person who does not believe it, as she saw Lightning alive at the end of the events of the previous game. Worse still, Snow, Hope, and Sazh are now separated from her as well, off doing their own thing, for one reason or the other.

But then one night, Serah has a vision of Lightning in her dream just as her new home, New Bodhum is attacked by monsters. Then for some damn reason, her clothes change.

Honestly, was the costume change necessary?

And then TADA!! Noel comes out of nowhere, helps Serah and tells her that he met Lightning and he is suppose to help bring Serah to her. From there, the story starts.

Now, I won't spoil too much of the storyline here, partly 'cause that would be really bad of me, but mostly because I DON'T REALLY UNDERSTAND THE DAMN STORY.

A lot of things are not clear in the story, such as the existence of the time travel gates, the artefacts, the Goddess Etro, the Farseers, Academia and so forth.

Compared to FF13, the storyline is far less focused here. The basic plot is fine: Serah and Noel have to go find her sister, and stop Caius from destroying the world!! There.

But when it comes to explaining beyond that, the story falters.

And, somehow, despite only having only two characters to play with, the game failed to bring out anything meaningful to them. They feel rather flat.

Not everything was flat in game though.

Not because of poor writing, but rather, the storyline does not focus on the characters but keep emphasizing on Finding Lightning and most of the time, the mission amounts to nothing more than just "Go there and make things right in the timeline". Which is rather weird, considering that FF13's main draw was that it was far more character-centric and were more compelling.

At some points in the game, the storytelling shines. *Spoiler Alert*
At one point in the game, you, as Serah, see Noel at his timeline, where he was one of the last few humans still alive about 700 years into the future.

The bleak setting, combined with the sad music, painted a rather character-defining moment for Noel. Suddenly, Noel's narrative about changing the future for the better, are no more just empty words sprouted over and over as Noel walks across the desert, alone after Caius left, and Yeul died (again).

Unfortunately, the game does not do this often enough, and thus loses a lot of focus. A bit of a 180 turn there compared to the last game, for the worse.


Gameplay

A lot of changes to the gameplay mechanics were made in the sequel.

One of the more significant changes is that the monsters are now not on the battlefield anymore, well, at least most of them. Only a few very powerful monsters are actually there, but these are few and far in-between.

We meet again, you overfed turtle.

Which I thought was rather dumb to change. Because now, instead of being able to see what monsters you could engage and plan somewhat ahead; the monsters randomly jump out of some chrono-arsehole and engage you.

If you can time it right, and hit them with your weapon, then you will get Haste bonus effect and a pre-emptive strike. If not, the battle goes on as normal.

However, there's a Mog Clock system that ticks down during this situation, if you want to avoid combat, you must run as far away as possible from the enemies before the time runs out. If you fail to do so, you will engage in combat penalised and WITH THE RETRY OPTION LOCKED.

Bloody annoying system. Why change what was not broken?

The same can be said of the Crystarium System: instead of being multi-faceted, it is now rather linear, and you choose from a menu which role to upgrade. And at the end of each path, you choose what bonuses to get, such as an extra ATB segment or unlock a new role.

Not to say that this system does not work. It just feels like a trivial change; change for the sake of change.

Thankfully, there are a few gameplay changes that are more thoughtful and fun. For one thing, if the selected leader gets K.O-ed, you simply switch to the other character to continue the battle, unlike the last game, where the loss of the leader means GAME OVER. Even better, you can switch leaders anytime during battle to take advantage of their skills.

Also, the linearity of FF13 is gone, due in part to the storyline. Similar to Chrono Trigger, Noel and Serah can time travel between different locations and time.

Obligatory Latin naming: Historia Crux.

Each different location has their own little distractions to complete, though the side quests amount to little more than fetch quests. Still, it is a refreshing change to be given this much freedom after the last game.

However, unlike Chrono Trigger, the consequences of changes in the timeline are not governed by you, but pre-scripted storyline progression. So, for those looking for the chance to have their own unique ending will be a little disappointed.

FF13-2 brings something completely new to the table, the monster taming system.

Kitteh!!

Since you can only play as Noel and Serah, the third slot is now taken up by a monster which you have a chance of taming upon defeat. And, each monster has their own Crystarium to expand upon, using certain materials to progress.

This system is addictively fun, not unlike Pokemon, as you go around the maps trying to obtain rare monsters to add to your party. Each monster has their own pseudo-limit break, and unique skills to add to the battles. Although you may only interchange between any three chosen monsters at any point.

The monster element brings a pretty fun angle to battles, as you come up with strategies to make the best of them.

Which is why the game becomes extremely disappointing, when it comes to the enemies you can fight. Despite having a wealth of battle options, almost all the battles in can be fought with minimal effort. The effort being switching paradigms.

The final battle took me a glorious two minutes to beat.

Square Enix, if you're gonna give us so many options to toy with in battle, then give the players something challenging dammit!!

I think there was less than a dozen boss battles and most of them were damn bloody easy to defeat. The rest was just easy.

Effectively, there was no tension at all when it came to battles. No sense of excitement at all. And, no sense of achievement after beating them.

And then, there are the puzzles.

Usually, in order to repair the timeline in some of the locations, players have to solve and get rid of "Temporal Rift Anomalies". They consist of three types of puzzles, and they are also bloody boring to solve.

God ,I hated doing this one soooo much.

They serve as rather unwanted pauses in-between the action, and more often than not, they take up far too much time to solve, especially the Hands of Time puzzle variants shown above. 

In fact, instead of putting up these goddamn puzzles, I feel that the team should've spent time making the anomalies a small story in itself, and end with a boss fight instead.

Overall, I'm not too impressed with the changes in gameplay. There are good ideas, but too many unnecessary ones.


Graphics

As usual, FF13-2 looks gorgeous, especially during the important story-relevant CGI cutscenes.

Absolutely gorgeous

However, those CGI cut scenes are shown very rarely. Instead, a lot of the scenes are done in-game, while it's not horrible by any means, the graphics level is certainly nowhere close to the beautiful CGI. And, during those scenes, the range of movements for the models are obviously limited.

There are noticeable framerate drops as well during the more graphic intensive scenes.

Somehow, I get the feeling that the graphics department were somewhat rushed to push the game out. Taking into account the fact that most of the monsters are recycled from the previous game, that fact gains more footing.

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To summarize Final Fantasy XIII-2.

The good:

• A better battle system
• More character development for Hope
• Open world exploration returns
• Stupidly addictive monster capturing system

The bad:

• Character progression is flat, limited
• Lack of a challenge
• Bloody annoying puzzles
• Bad music choices, especially that heavy metal, rapping boss battle theme
• Gives illusion of being able to have multiple endings, but actually does not
• Making changes to aspects that were not broken in the first place

Overall, I am not impressed with Final Fantasy XIII-2. While it is by no means a half-hearted attempt, obviously alot of thought were put into it, but due to a short production time, it does not feel like it was all implemented properly.

Honestly, if you ain't a fan of the XIII universe, give this one a pass.