Murray
Well-Known Member
I wanted to write this because I hated Final Fantasy XIII up until the last hours of it which was torture to get to.
First, the last paragraph has the most important part to me if this is too long for you so gander at it.
Lets get the easy part over with first. This game is beautiful. The graphics, the music, the secrets and puzzles. All of the things you've come to learn to love from Final Fantasy is there.
Alright, lets begin. Final Fantasy XIII-2 picks up with Lightening's sister Serah. Life has been going well for her since the final battle in FF XIII except for the fact that Lightening is gone and for all intensive purposes, no one seems to remember her surviving the battle at the end of FF XIII. We, as the players, know pretty quickly that Lightening isn't dead as she's given the section of the game as the main playable hero for the tutorial section. Shortly into the game as Serah is pondering all these strange things that are happening we meet Noel. He's from the future and he's here to take us back! Back to the future. So, there's the start of the story. Sound messed up? You're playing Final Fantasy, get over it.
The battle system picks up where FF XIII left off and I liked it quite a lot better. Serah and Noel learn various "jobs" through the game while capturing and recruiting monster allies. I was kind of thinking this was going to suck at the beginning but capturing and mixing your monsters to create stronger monsters is actually kind of fun. Its also essential that you learn this system, otherwise you're going to be left weak as time goes on.
This game doesn't lack in places that you visit. While there's still not much on traditional towns (Think Final Fantasy 9) there are places with people that you interact with (finally!) and your job is to find Lightening and set time right. You go up and down the time line visiting areas and sometimes revisiting them setting things straight.
The quests (because of the time element of the game) are brilliant in my opinion. You still have to fetch something but you need to go into the future so that the thing exists that you're fetching and surprise bring it back to the past.
There's old characters from FF XIII that do come back, but they play mostly side stories for you as you march across time.
FF XIII-2 is a game with multiple endings which I truly appreciate. Because of the time aspect, you can get an item after completing the game called the Paradox Scope. It allows you to essentially break the story and complete it in a different way. You can go through to various boss battles where you might follow a quest line to save multiple places. Don't want to do that? Paradox scope and go kill that thing screw saving time and here's a brand new ending.
This game has a lot of heart and its a story about siblings. Its a story about how far a sister will go to save her sister. Its a story about how far a man will go to try to set right what his love could not. These two are star crossed partners, platonic and longing. This game displays them both perfectly. It excellently tells this tale and has a lot of humor in there to break up the almost Battle Star Galactica like shadow that's over taking the world. The ending, it was hard to take, but its necessary to continue to the next story in the FF XIII games.
If you are a final fantasy fan and didn't like FF XIII there's still hope for this game. I give it a 4 out of 5.
If you're wondering why not a full 5:
The monster capture/training system needs explained better
There's not a lot of explanation of how your stats affect your characters so you'll need to read up on how to help yourself
Haste was removed from the game! WTF?
There's obvious points where you're teased to something awesome but it ends up being DLC
While hidden quests are awesome, there is one level that has tons of them and you need the internet to help you figure it out versus FF 9 and FF 10 where its talked about by people and the characters.
First, the last paragraph has the most important part to me if this is too long for you so gander at it.
Lets get the easy part over with first. This game is beautiful. The graphics, the music, the secrets and puzzles. All of the things you've come to learn to love from Final Fantasy is there.
Alright, lets begin. Final Fantasy XIII-2 picks up with Lightening's sister Serah. Life has been going well for her since the final battle in FF XIII except for the fact that Lightening is gone and for all intensive purposes, no one seems to remember her surviving the battle at the end of FF XIII. We, as the players, know pretty quickly that Lightening isn't dead as she's given the section of the game as the main playable hero for the tutorial section. Shortly into the game as Serah is pondering all these strange things that are happening we meet Noel. He's from the future and he's here to take us back! Back to the future. So, there's the start of the story. Sound messed up? You're playing Final Fantasy, get over it.
The battle system picks up where FF XIII left off and I liked it quite a lot better. Serah and Noel learn various "jobs" through the game while capturing and recruiting monster allies. I was kind of thinking this was going to suck at the beginning but capturing and mixing your monsters to create stronger monsters is actually kind of fun. Its also essential that you learn this system, otherwise you're going to be left weak as time goes on.
This game doesn't lack in places that you visit. While there's still not much on traditional towns (Think Final Fantasy 9) there are places with people that you interact with (finally!) and your job is to find Lightening and set time right. You go up and down the time line visiting areas and sometimes revisiting them setting things straight.
The quests (because of the time element of the game) are brilliant in my opinion. You still have to fetch something but you need to go into the future so that the thing exists that you're fetching and surprise bring it back to the past.
There's old characters from FF XIII that do come back, but they play mostly side stories for you as you march across time.
FF XIII-2 is a game with multiple endings which I truly appreciate. Because of the time aspect, you can get an item after completing the game called the Paradox Scope. It allows you to essentially break the story and complete it in a different way. You can go through to various boss battles where you might follow a quest line to save multiple places. Don't want to do that? Paradox scope and go kill that thing screw saving time and here's a brand new ending.
This game has a lot of heart and its a story about siblings. Its a story about how far a sister will go to save her sister. Its a story about how far a man will go to try to set right what his love could not. These two are star crossed partners, platonic and longing. This game displays them both perfectly. It excellently tells this tale and has a lot of humor in there to break up the almost Battle Star Galactica like shadow that's over taking the world. The ending, it was hard to take, but its necessary to continue to the next story in the FF XIII games.
If you are a final fantasy fan and didn't like FF XIII there's still hope for this game. I give it a 4 out of 5.
If you're wondering why not a full 5:
The monster capture/training system needs explained better
There's not a lot of explanation of how your stats affect your characters so you'll need to read up on how to help yourself
Haste was removed from the game! WTF?
There's obvious points where you're teased to something awesome but it ends up being DLC
While hidden quests are awesome, there is one level that has tons of them and you need the internet to help you figure it out versus FF 9 and FF 10 where its talked about by people and the characters.
