FINAL FANTASY XIII-2

Posted the same review (this one is slightly editted) to Steam under the name W r a i t h, which is me of course. TL:DR at the bottom (paragraph). Alright, first things first, the thing everyone wants to know about. Is the port good? Does it provide graphics options like they promised? Well, people got ahead of themselves. They promised they'd patch FFXIII and release FFXIII-2 with resolutions options a couple of other things. Well, they did. We got resolution options, we got shadow resolution, we got AA, and we got jap audio at only half the size of the original. However, what remains is the multithreading issues and underperformance due to the game not making use of all the PC's power. Well, if I sit back with a gamepad the 30fps (since constant 60 fps is probably impossible for most PC builds) becomes tolerable, I suppose, it's still a pain. Graphically, it's an improvement over the first, but that comes with its own problems due to the optimization. Can't imagine playing without a controller, because the fps ain't as bad when looking from a greater distance (assuming you sit back further with a gamepad like me). Let's start with a comparison with FFXIII. You play as Serah, Lightning's sister who you never thought you'd want to play as, and probably still don't after going through this game. Yeah, the characters aren't any better this time around. At least it's less linear, yay! The best comparison for the jump from FFXIII to FFXIII-2 is to the jump between FFX and FFX-2. In FFX, they never gave you the airship to travel around until the last act of the game. In FFX-2 they give it to you right away so you can explore. Here it's much the same. Once you unlock a time period and its corresponding location, you can travel there anytime you like and those locations won't bog you down in a tight corridor nearly as much. Course it still has its fair share of linear paths, it's a FF game after all. Combat is a slightly more polished, the animations feel for fluent and everything is a tad more responsive. Since Noel and Serah are the main 2 characters you'll ever control, the game allows you to train monsters you've obtained throughout battles to act as the third member of your party. It's actually better than you think since you're always on the lookout for better monsters that have good stats and also have good synergy with Noel and Serah in the respected Paradigms you've created. Last note for this section, the camera seems to control better. I had an issue where it would constantly drag to the left or right depending on the location and direction of movement, but that seems to have been resolved. Actually, let me put it like this, was FFX-2 enjoyable for you? If the answer is yes, this is straight up your alley. If it's no, then stay away, especially if you loved X a lot more than XIII in which case this will DEFINITELY be unworthy of your time. ----- The game's side content consists of replaying areas and travelling to other timelines and areas to collect items or skills required to complete quests from other areas. Basically a fancy way of making you do slightly-more-interesting-than-the-average-fetch-quest type of quest. Sometimes, you'll have to reset entire timezones by "closing the gate" resetting all progress you've made (although quests and items collected will be kept). This is largely to repeat "Live Triggers." LT is essentially cutscenes where you'll be given prompts to ask or answer questions with 4 different choices. Each one gives you new dialogue and answering them all nets you a reward at the end of each mission depending on how many you answered and how you answered them. Hardly a deciding factor in convincing you to replay missions over and over however, they are required to collect fragments and for certain paradox endings. Fragments are basically the collectables, but also unlock more content and ahem, endings. Fragments are scattered everywhere and WILL require you to repeat areas and do quests to obtain all of them (160 in total). Wow this really sounds like FFX-2 right now, but IMO it's better. It feels like less of a chore and a grind because well, it's more interesting. But if you're expecting new stuff to pop up every single time you visit that's actual worthwhile 100% of the time, welp, wrong game. Not the story though, the story just there, no magic happening here. Snow is still the same meathead, Hope is Hope but older and somehow less interesting (impossible, you might say). Noel is better than Tidus, oh wait, every male MC is better than Tidus, hehe not biased at all. Speaking of which, the game has 9 endings. The 8 other variations aside from the original require you to have done certain things throughout the game as well as having the Paradox Scope I believed it was called to change timelines or whatever. Each other ending is really just extra. But again, the gamer OCD all JRPGs tug on comes into play here. The ending of the DLC, Requiem of the Goddess, apparently contains the true ending, which really just sets up FFXIII-3/Lightning Returns with an extra scene. Speaking of which, there's DLC in here. Though it's mainly just outfits and the actual "story" ones are just really shorts battles and stuff. ------- SO! Do you want to buy this game. Well, do you like FFXIII? Well, this one has improved gameplay and is less linear. It's also less of a grind, still is, but there's more lore to be uncovered and mini-stories to hear unlike the bland side content of the first game. Do the Live Triggers make this into a Dragon Age/Mass Effect game with lots of multiple outcomes and character relationship? Absoutely not. Is everything so compelling you'll want to 100% the game? Maybe, maybe not, depends on your connection with the game and where it stands in your mind. Is all that DLC definitely something that adds more value? No, not really. Is this a bad game.......no, I would say it isn't. It is a competent game that learns from the mistakes of the first, keeps a bunch of other stuff the same, and doesn't do a lot of stuff worse. However, the characters are even worst, considering any shred of development and interesting tidbits were revealed in the first game, the maps get old, collecting is a hit or miss. I'm not ashamed to say I enjoyed it, and I'll definitely recognize it as a game allowed to bear the FF name. It's far from terrible, just open up a little to it. If you're a gamer who believes FFVII and FFVIII are the greatest and the rest are terrible then this is not for you. If you enjoyed FFXIII then this is for you. If you're like me and have played multiple FF games and have understood this game isn't the "cream of the FF crop " but want to play a AAA JRPG (because wow, there aren't many on Steam), check it out. It's worth its price if you just let go of all that hate, and just play. You'll get mad, you might facepalm or SMH at some of the scenes, you might laugh because something is so stupid, but you'll hopefully have some good ol' fun. I Like This Game. It's A Good Time.

So FF-XIII-2 continues the story of FF XIII, in a way, if you know a little bit about alternate universes (from movies) you'll understand why it is both a sequel and an independent game. One of the main critiques of FF-XIIi, was that is a linear game and the developers tried their best to make this game as non-linear as possible. We have different protagonists this time: Serah (which you should know from the first game) and Noel. Once again the characters are really well done, to the point that you care about their fate and you want to make them achieve their goals. The combat is almost the same, but with a few tweaks, now you can add to you parry monsters, in the number of 3,but only one at a time will be active. The story takes a darker tone, it also adds alternate universes and time travel to the mix. You can travel to different periods of time anytime you want (once you unlock it) and do secondary quests. A nice addition is the mix of old & new music themes which make for a pretty memorable experience.The graphics are updated and it still looks very good & it also runs pretty decent. In terms of scale it's not as epic as the FF-XIII but it's definitely a good game. In the end I'd say FF-XIII-2 is a worth playing game, few games have such unique characters & story, it is also a solid RPG experience.

As you might recall, Final Fantasy XIII was pretty much reviled everywhere. As a response, Square-Enix released a sequel that promised to fix everything that was wrong with the previous game. Did it work?...sort of. The first thing that is immediately apparent with the game is that there is no longer any linearity.In fact, the game is the opposite of XIII, with both the story and game systems taking a free-form approach, allowing you to level your characters the way you want, and tackle the story chapters with quite a bit of degree of freedom, though this freedom also means there's some tedious back&forth in some sections. Speaking of story...it's still nonsensical, with a LOT of reading done through datalogs to get the gist of it,like XIII was.Liked it more than XIII, but that's mostly due to being a sucker for sci-fy plots (like time-travel). Graphically, the game's a bit worse than XIII, but nothing serious that could distract you.Some places look just as great as XIII did (Academia looks pretty gorgeous). Graphical Settings are a exact carbon copy from XIII, with nothing to set both of 'em apart in that regard. The performance did change though...for the worse. This game runs even worse than XIII did, on the exact same hardware. Expect your framerate to be both lower and even more jittier than XIII was.

I really like the previous game and don't care what people say about it. I love it for its story and characters, but not the gameplay. Final Fantasy XIII-2 is improved in almost everything! It's not linear anymore, the battle system is slightly better and you can also catch some monsters and make them fight for you. Music is phenomenal again, but that's probably nothing surprising. FF series always had great music. The only thing that is not so good in this one is, sadly, story. It is even more confusing than before, but I still found it pretty enjoyable. Even though there's not so many characters, but the main villain is awesome. Also the Japanese dubbing is fabulous, by the way. The port is bad as always, and the game has problems to not go below 30 FPS. I did not mind that much. I didn't even try any performance mods. The main criterion that makes a game good in my eyes is story (well, most of the time). But not this time. I enjoyed playing XIII-2 more than its predecessor. Maybe because it was a bit shorter... I don't know. Everyone who had some complains about XIII should give this game a shot. I'm looking forward to Lightning Returns.

Yet ANOTHER less than mediocre final fantasy direct sequel. A horrible game filled with cheesy lines, poor cutscenes , snooze inducing writing and that almost seems like it was made as a dare, or as a joke. It's only redeeming factor is that it has to do with time travel, and even that, they managed to ruin. You would think the company, after making one of the best JRPGs ever(Chrono Trigger) that they would know a little about how to make an enjoyable time travelling adventure. They do not! In fact, a part of me wonders if the team involved with this game has even an inkling of what time travel is. I love final fantasy games, but this one wasn't worth my time, let alone my money.