Final Fantasy XIII-2 is the direct sequel to Final Fantasy XIII, and it takes most of the criticisms of that game to try and rectify all of them. The game follows Serah, the sister of Lightning. For some reason, Serah is the only one who remembers Lightning. After some weird happenings in which she meets Noel, a time traveller from the future, both of them set off to find Lightning. The game actually starts with a fairly epic (but also cheesy) battle in which you get to control Lightning, and that is the only time that you will ever get to control her, in a series of tutorials, which is fairly disappointing.
Serah and Noel will travel through time and space to find time paradoxes, solve them to get more artefacts to unlock more locations, and then keep going until they find Lightning. This is supposed to solve the biggest criticism of the first game, which was blasted for being overly linear as you basically ran down corridors. Here, there is a degree of non-linearity as you can complete locations in various orders, with a bunch of optional areas. Each location has a more complex map that isn’t just completely filled with straight corridors.
Each location has a bunch of collectibles in the form of treasure chests, as well as sidequests. There are too many sidequests and they are all of one of two kinds, either a hunt quest, or it’ll be a fetch quest. Both of which are boring and bland. Forcing you to run from one end of the map to another, or back out of the location, enter another one, grab something there and return to the original location, is lazy and uninspired. Random encounters also return, although there is a quality-of-life improvement. While traversing the map, enemies will randomly pop up and you get a short period of time so trike them for a pre-emptive strike or run away to avoid the battle. It’s a good compromise although being able to see every enemy on the field is still preferred. However, there are enemies who don’t stay still when they appear and they are annoying as it is basically a forced battle at that point.
The combat system remains the same but with some slight improvements. It’s a hybrid turn-based real-time combat system. There is still an active time bar (ATB) which fills up as time goes by. This will dictate what moves you can use. All moves will expend ATB, there is no separate MP bar and cost. As time never stops even if you’re in the menu, that provides the real-time element. As a result, while you can pick the moves from the menu, there is an auto-battle option which will automatically pick the moves, and most of the time, they’re good enough. Only for extremely powerful opponents where you have a specific strategy will you really spend the time to specifically pick moves.
Paradigms form a huge part of the combat system. It’s basically a fancy name for a set of three jobs. There six jobs, or roles as they’re known in the game: Commando, Ravager, Medic, Synergist, Saboteur and Sentinel. Commando excel in offsensive power; Ravager for building up the chain required for staggering enemies; Medic for healing; synergist for buffing; Saboteur for debuffing; and Sentinel for defence. A paradigm is a set of the roles for each of the three party members, and you get a deck of six to change on the fly during battle. This is the main strategic element in each battle and basically the only input you have.
All enemies have a stagger bar which is filled by attacks. Once staggered, and each enemy has a different stagger point, they will be defenceless and the damage multiplier is significant enough for your party to do massive damage. You pretty much have to stagger all bosses in order to beat them. With the turn-based hybrid system, this allows the characters to have flash attack animations and they do look very nice. Although this can still be boring sometimes, especially in the beginning when you are waiting for the ATB to slowly fill so you can get your next attack in. Most of the game’s enemies are easy but it loves to chuck monsters several times your level randomly at you just for the fun of it in random encounters.
The biggest change to the combat system is that your party only has two permanent members, being Serah and Noel. The third slot is filled by recruitable monsters. Each time you defeat a monster, there is a random chance that you get a crystal which allows it to join your party. You can select up to three monsters to put into your paradigm deck of six, and each monster only has one role. In this aspect, it is less flexible than the original. On the other hand, since you have so many monsters to choose from, the variety comes back in that aspect instead. However, recruiting monsters into your party comes with the inherent problems of investing into a monster only to find a more powerful one later, and that can be annoying. The game doesn’t do a great job as letting you know a monster’s potential and how strong it is compared to another without actually spending the limited resources to level it up.
The game wants to encourage the player to continue to recruit monsters and invest in them. To do this, it not only limits each monster to having only one role, but also they each have a different maximum level, a different growth pattern, and most annoying of all, very limited moves, some of which are unique and exclusive. To create a better allrounder, you will need to capture many monsters, level them up, and then fuse them with each other to transfer moves to help flesh out the range of moves a monster has. This is time intensive, and as mentioned earlier, there are no easy indications within the game to show the potential of a monster.
The story is terribly told. Given the non-linearity of some sections (meaning you can do some first before others), it means that it’s not a tightly paced story at all. It’s scattered, messy, and sometimes, you’re not even sure if you’re progressing properly. All the cutscenes are boring. The characters fall flat and are uninteresting. Both Serah and Noel are terrible protagonists. Basically, all they yap about is time and paradoxes, making the whole thing cheesy and cringy, like some sort of amateur fan fiction. The antagonist is supposed to look menacing but we don’t learn anything about him until the very end, making it very hard to care.
The story’s not the only bad part of the game. There’s the addition of wound damage, where it reduces maximum HP. It’s annoying in that it is useless against monsters, but devastating against your party if a battle drags on for too long. There are different types of puzzles, all are frustrating in one way or another. Some are just pressing switches until you open up the path, offering no difficulty and are just a waste of time. Others require too much thought and are too complex, sucking out the fun of it, while also wasting your time. The last parts of the game collect all these annoying parts into one section. The final dungeon is not very big or long, but drags it out by having “puzzles” which takes on the form of floating platforms that you have to wait for it to rotate into position. The random encounter rate is high with tougher enemies, some of which are even harder than the final boss.
It takes 15 to 20 hours to finish the game, and while the final boss looked epic, the ending was one of epic disappointment. It wasn’t great and was a shameless attempt to continue onto the sequel. After the final battle, you can return to spend quite a bit of time on getting 100% completion. The PC version also includes most of the DLC, basically all the story content is included, and only some outfits are missing. That said, none of the DLC are meaty. There are a bunch of outfits and special opponents to fight, with their intros being some of the best and funniest scenes in the game. There is a story DLC focusing on Sazh and how he ended up where he was in the story, but it’s so short and simplistic as the DLC basically has you play the two new card games, so it’s a dud.
The other story DLC, Requiem of the Goddess focuses on Lightning and how she ended up with her fate in the ending. That’s more interesting than it sounds because it is a 15 min piece of content extended to over an hour. You have to repeat a battle again and again, losing and gaining levels, to attempt it again. Once you are stronger enough, you fight a second battle with the same concept of losing, gaining levels and finally becoming strong enough to beat the boss. It’s a fun fight, sure, but not when you have to do it ten times, back-to-back. The story it has is to barebones and bad, that you would feel ripped off if you had to pay for it.
Overall, Final Fantasy XIII-2 improves upon some things but regresses in others. It took all of the criticisms of XIII to heart, so it make the progressing more non-linear, created more interesting maps, and added more variety to the party by having you recruit monsters. Unfortunately, they swung too far on the other side as there are a lot of little annoyances that build up to a somewhat frustrating experience at times. The poor transparency of what monsters are worth leveling up, the mundane fetch quests that fill the story and sidequests, the empty maps, and of course, the terrible story. It all ends up being a mediocre game that even Final Fantasy fans might not love.
---------------------------------------------------------