I didn't hate Final Fantasy XIII, on the contrary, I enjoyed it (linearity doesn't really bother me as long as there are other redeeming features, even if the story was not the best and I got the Platinum trophy for the game so I played for quite a while), so I was looking forward to the sequel, especially when the promised to improve on pretty much everything from XIII. Story-wise, I didn't feel XIII needed a continuation, but each to their own. Now that I've finished the story, wow, story-wise, it is a terrible game. So let me expand on that a little bit.
Let me make this clear, I'm a Final Fantasy and JRPG fan, the stories that's been told, they were (for the most part), captivating and interesting. Granted, the more recent entries left some more to be desired, but still held out okay. XIII-2 just plummets in this aspect, and creates a new low. The story was terrible!! The change of direction was so apparent here, XIII tried to be more realistic in it's story, but now, suddenly, XIII-2's events are outrageous, exaggerated, and blown way out of proportion (I guess there's more classic fantasy elements here), it just did not fit or flow like a sequel should. That in itself isn't the downfall of XIII-2, it's the boringness of it all. In ALL of the cutscenes (and there's a fair few, although not as much as XIII, difference here? I didn't mind it in XIII so much since it was more interesting), I just found myself wishing it would end quickly and I go and fight the next boss. The story did not captivate me at all, and I've read that is improves in content and pace in the last moments of the game, but it wasn't enough, to the very end, it was boring. I was terribly disappointed since it failed to get me immersed into the characters (and darn, Serah gets annoying very quickly).
There's not much character development here, both main characters stays the same. We don't see enough of the antagonist Cauis to have the empathy that the writers wanted us to have. Yes, Cauis wasn't a pure villain, he had his reasons, but they were revealed too late, and wasn't very effective. Yeul, although another sad character, felt very stereotypical with the monotone(ish) voice and inexpressive face, where I would cringe at what she did sometimes. By forcefully including appearances of XIII characters like *spoiler* Sazh, Fang and Vanille *spoiler end*, it made the story even worse and far-fetched (especially when a certain someone travels bloody 500 years in the future, wtf?).
Funnily enough, I thought XIII's graphics were better. I think it might be the environments and the way it's colored, where XIII-2's were either more dark or the whole environment had this shade of color. Still good graphics though, and pleasing to the eye. The lip-syncing weren't that good, and the characters did not express emotions very well, especially Serah... all she ever does is nod in that way of hers...
Game play? For all the improvements, it's only marginally better than XIII. I liked how when you change your paradigms, it doesn't have that animation that you're forced to watch, and that you were allowed to unlock all your character's role very soon afterwards. That said, the battle system feels slower, with no way of speeding it up (not being able to cast Haste yourself was very annoying too). I personally hated the monster that you have in your party, I would rather much preferred an additional character. Especially when you don't know if the new monster you've just caught is worth wasting materials on to level up or not (you have no way of knowing how it's stats compare to the one you're currently using, nor all the abilities it learns). I just hated how you're limited to three monsters to use at a time, since each monster only had one role, making three in total (an additional character would provide six).
A lot of the additions ruined the gameplay too, quick time events just do not belong here. I would rather spend the time watching the action rather than focusing on the buttons that's about to appear and pressing them, especially when they add nothing. No, I did not feel as if I was in the action along with them. The puzzles felt tacked on as well, and broke the flow of the game. Thankfully, both of these did not appear often.
The game was too easy, at least, the story bosses were too easy. I cruised through all the encounters, and if you even deviate from the story to do some sidequests (as I did), you would come back and find that your strength far outmatch your opponents. They didn't provide a challenge at all, this is a massive problem considering that the developers boasts about non-linearity and wants you to explore. The reason for this problem is that you level up too fast, they should either limit and lower the 'experience points' (known in-game as Crystogen points) or (preferably) scale the opponents up (maybe not on par with your characters, but a bit harder would be nice). This easiness was another reason why it's so easy to get bored while playing through the story.
Serendipity was an epic fail. Boasted as a play area to spend your time on mini-games, and like the Gold Saucer of Final Fantasy VII, it only had... two mini-games. The most annoying part? It tells you that you can unlock new games via DLC.
An interesting observation I've read was that while XIII has the words "l'cie", "fal'cie" and "cie'th" constantly being said, this game had an overuse of the words "paradox", "artefact" and "gate", amongst others. I didn't think the Historia Crux was a great idea, it's basically a level select screen, and the load times can be annoying (and you see the loading screen all too often, even when it's loading between cutscenes).
Now that all the bad stuff's out of the way, I can mention that bits that I liked. The exploration factor was good. I think they shouldn't have touted the fact that you explore locations that we've seen before in XIII again in different eras. First, from the locations that's seen in XIII, apart from Oerba, they looked nothing alike, you can show it to me and I can't even tell it's supposed to be the same (or at least, an adjacent) location. Next, the different times didn't provide as big of a change as you'd expect, different eras of the same map just looked... like the same. It got to the point where the year xxxAF was just a number and had no real significant meaning. Anyway, the ability to restart areas from scratch is a very nice addition, especially when you didn't get all the things you wanted in the first place.
The variety of music was massive, I think XIII-2 has the most variety out of all Final Fantasy games so far. A lot of the tracks worked and I loved it, while others were plain fail. I think, overall, the music was better than it's predecessor's. Tracks like "Paradigm Shift", "Plains of Eternity" and "Paradox" were great, and I instantly liked them, others like "Limit Break" took some time to get used to.
The leveling system was better in that it allowed more freedom, although I missed the good old days of XIII where you could easily break 40000 damage in one hit, it's much harder to do that in this game.
And finally, the ending. I didn't really believe it when I read the ending wasn't that good, I had know about the "To be continued" part but I seriously did not realise what they were about to do. I think it would have been better if they stopped after the happy bit, and if they had really wanted to make a sequel, just do what they did here. Replay the ending as the beginning and then add on what happened, it would have worked much better. As it is, what a terrible ending, and it just ruined what little enjoyment I had for the story. Although XIII-3 is now imminent.
Overall, it wasn't a game that I enjoyed too much off. I'd eventually loved the game play, but the story is a new low for the series. That said, there is so much to do and I will go on to Platinum the game. I'm glad I didn't buy it on release day and waited until it had dropped in price.
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Apologies for the very long post. If you would wished to read my thoughts on the Demo, click here.
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Edit: Well, I've just gotten the Platinum trophy as well (within a week of finishing the story), and it was a very easy Platinum trophy to get. There were some annoying bits, but nothing too drastic and it's as you'd expect. Much less annoying that XIII though, that one took forever and was a pain with all the grinding. At least XIII-2 had a bit more variety. I think I still enjoyed the gameplay a lot more than the story itself... the battle system is fun (and no, I did not just mash X and used Auto-Battle). Although the monster leveling up process could use some revamping, farming for monster materials is stupid and drags out for way too long (i.e. very boring). Also, letting you own at least two monsters at once would be nice... I had quite a few times where I would be leveling one up and then I wanted this particular ability on another monster and this was the only one (or the most cost efficient one) that has it that could be transferred... so I had to sacrifice it, catch it again, and level it back up, very stupid.
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