Final Fantasy XIII-2

Although not a first for the franchise, but the first that I’ve played, Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a rare direct sequel to a Final Fantasy game. The producers at Square felt that the world and lore that was created for Final Fantasy XIII had more story to tell and after putting more than 100 hours into FF13 myself in 2 complete playthroughs I didn’t disagree with them on that at all. At the end of 13 even the most annoying of characters developed to a point where I actually liked them, or at least accepted them for who they are, and the conflict had resolved to a point of being a satisfying ending. The question is does XIII-2 improve on the perceived flaws of its predecessor. As a bit of a warning I find it very hard to talk about XIII-2 on it’s own merits like I do with most sequels, and this review is going to be a little more referential than I’d like.

I’ve said this before, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it here; I play Final Fantasy games foremost for the story, starting with Final Fantasy 4 (2 in North America) I had a new appreciation for storytelling in video games and I’ve followed the franchise closely ever since. And I’m sad to report that the story told in XIII-2 did not live up to my expectations. I feel like in an effort to improve the flaws cited by fans it became difficult to have a guided, well told experience. Not to mention shorter; I finished XIII-2 in about 25 hours, less than half the time it took me to finish XIII which was practically all story. They gave the players a gated freedom to choose their path (which I will get to later) that resulted at least in terms of story telling, in a ‘villain of the week’ television series model. Where you go to an area, complete the main objective which rarely has much to do with the over-arching plot, you are then rewarded with a bit of information to advance the story. As a gamer primarily interested in the story, there were only 3 moments in the game that I thought were really well told, and only one of those that was really powerful, the ‘reveal’ was excellent, but it definitely didn’t make up for the rest. One other note on length, while I did finish the main story in about 25 hours, that only included 41 of the 160 fragments to be gathered, so in a sense only represents a quarter of the game. fragments are collected by completing main and side quests, finding hidden treasures and killing certain monsters. At the time of this writing I have collected 78/160 and my play time is somewhere between 34-38 hours though much of that was spent in the casino with a button stuck down playing slots (yes I did collect a fragment from this as well). As you can imagine there is a lot of game time here for completionists who are not necessarily motivated by story.

Many fans criticised 13 for linearity, and I agree that the corridors definitely felt tedious at times but I definitely wasn’t as down on the game about it as most. XIII-2 aimed to improve this by introducing the Historia Crux. To me the Historia Crux felt much like a Mario world map, where you unlock new levels by completing objectives in the levels that came before it. In each area you’ll find artefacts that unlock gates found in the area that will open up new, times/locations in the Historia Crux. This is supplemented by gates that are opened using ‘Wild Artefacts’ which gives the player some choice as to which areas they open up next, though it seemed to me that those choices were inconsequential. So while there are some freedoms here, it is just the illusion of freedom since there is still only one way to advance the plot. In a sense, a return to form that many fans of the franchise will be happy to see but I do not believe it was worth the apparent sacrifice to the story telling.

The paradigm combat system remained mostly unchanged, but unlike 13 where you have a whole slew of characters to choose from who are more or less limited to the roles they can fill, your party in 13-2 consists of only 2 characters, Serah and Noel, who don’t really develop at all unlike in 13, and really don’t have any other motivation than to track down lightning by resolving time paradoxes. In 13 there was a certain amount of strategy involved in which characters you put into your battle party since they all contained a different combination of roles and so you couldn’t necessarily have all the representation that you wanted. In 13-2 you fill out your 3 person battle team with monsters. Each monster only has 1 role, but out of combat you establish a paradigm pack of 3 monsters. This gives you a lot of freedom with regards to how you build your team since you are not limited by the roles of a certain character, but the sacrifice there is that some of the strategy is gone. These monsters are randomly collected by beating them in combat. That aspect of it is actually pretty fun in a pokemon sort of way, and collectors are going to have a good/frustrating time trying to “catch ‘em all”. That said most of the monsters I used in my deck I obtained early on and used them for most of the game, I never really felt obligated to switch them out for ‘better’ ones. This is partially due to the Crystarium system which I will get to in a bit. The most disappointing thing to me about the combat system in 13-2 in general however is that the significance of the Saboteur and Synergist roles has been drastically reduced. In 13 I felt like it was crazy to even consider going into a boss battle without the ability to buff/debuff, and in my opinion it was one of the best implementations of those roles because they felt significant. One other change to the combat is the introduction of ”Cinematic Action”, read quick time events, which are implemented in 2 ways. First, via a monster’s ‘Feral Link’ ability, which relies on a chain meter that builds up during combat, once full can be unleashed to perform a monster specific ability that is often (but not always) related to their role. For example, I had a synergist that  would cast a whole slew of buffs, successfully completing the quick time event grants a percentage bonus to the ability. I’m not entirely sure but I believe in the case of the synergist previously mention it modified the duration of those buffs. The second implementation of quick time events is at the end of boss battles, I hate QTEs implemented in this scenario since it takes away from watching some of the best cinematics, luckily these seem to inexplicably taper off in the second half of the game.

The Crystarium system returns though it has been changed dramatically. For the characters, Instead of choosing a role, and getting stats and abilities from nodes within the role, you have 1 set of nodes. Nodes come in different sizes, and you basically assign a role to the node, depending on the size of the node, you get more stats based on the role you’ve selected. For example, if you select commando, your attack will go up, while if you select ravager it will be magic. It’s not 1 to 1 like that though, you will often get ‘some’ points in each, hp, magic and attack, but the stat for role you select gets more. Abilities are unlocked after set amount of nodes have been selected for the role. Monsters also use the Crystarium system though it is slightly different, instead of using CP earned in battle like the characters, monsters use items that you find or buy. These items have stats assigned to them, so you can use ‘magic’ items to improve the magic abilities for the monster for example. I found the items to be a bit scarce when it comes to the later tiers as well as cost prohibitive, which is why I used the same monsters for most of the game. I feel as though it was a missed opportunity to add an element of strategy to the paradigm packs.

I should also mention that mini-games are back, there are some puzzles, and a casino with slots and chocobo racing, and does add a bit of variety to the gameplay and serves as a nice distraction once in a while.

All and all I had an ok time with the game, but I think it went in the wrong direction. It clearly tries to appease those who were disappointed with 13, by adding some of the missing features but in doing so it feels as though it alienated those of us who appreciated 13 for what it was. I’m hoping that there is some sort of proper conclusion by way of DLC as opposed to the full on sequel as the 13-3 rumors are suggesting, because as it stands I have a hard time recommending this game to Final Fantasy fans like myself who are looking for an epic story. The game is not broken by any means and there is some fun to be had to be sure, but it is definitely on my short list of disappointing Final Fantasy games.