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.

Final Fantasy XIII-2

To say I’m having mixed feelings about Final Fantasy XIII-2 would be an understatement. It seems like they took the fans criticisms to heart, and brought back some of the staples that many people loved about Final Fantasy games in the past. Sounds good right?

I know I was in the minority when I said that I didn’t mind the corridors in Final Fantasy 13, the story was compelling enough to encourage me to push forward. My playthrough was 50 hours without the need to dilute the experience with aimless exploration. What appears to have happened is that they bring back exploring by way of hiding fragments within various sandboxes. You don’t explore a world at all, you explore small segments of a world and you can select which segment you want to explore via the ‘Historia Crux’. The Historia Crux feels like a Super Mario world map, as you get through areas you unlock new ones to explore. Here’s the thing, this is not the type of exploration that Final Fantasy is known for, it’s kind of a joke. I’m sure later in the game when it makes sense to revisit some of these areas because they have changed due to your actions it might be a little more engaging but as it stands now I feel this ‘addition’ has taken away my primary motivation in FF games, that is to say the story suffers.

While there is an over arching story that has Serah searching through time to find her sister, each of the areas in the Historia Crux feels like its own episode. Like any piece of episodic content, there will be good and bad parts, but in many cases you’re left with one piece of information to advance, or flesh out the over arching story. The problem with this in my mind is that the sub-plots here feels like most of these are insignificant or forgettable so far. I’m still early on so maybe this will improve with time but there isn’t a ton of motivation for me in this game.

There have been some neat changes to the paradigm combat system, first is the fact that you only have 2 characters to develop, to fill out the group however you get to add 3 monsters to your deck. Each monster has 1 of the classes assigned to them, so you get a little bit more control over which classes are available to you, provided that you have monsters of the type you’re looking for. Monsters are levelled up via the crystarium system just like the character, however instead of earning CP, they progress by using specific items that you can find or buy to level. The combat itself feels a little more reactive, or rather, you have less time to react, and it’s more about watching the opponents animations, it’s sort of neat but I’m not totally used to it yet.

I’m not going to talk about the Crystarium system at the moment because I don’t really feel like I understand it. Suffice to say it is different from the last game, in that you don’t seem to have separate crystals per class and it isn’t nearly as obvious what you’re getting when you spend your CP in the new system. I hope this makes more sense later but it just feels like clicking buttons at this point.

You know, despite all that, I’m still having some fun here, and I’m going to continue playing, I just unlocked the casino before turning in last night, and it’s just as tiresome as it was in FF7. I’m hopeful that some of this stuff evolves pretty soon though particularly the story.

I was updating my wishlist (in the panel on the right there) and I noticed of how good the next couple months are going to be, and I’m not sure how it is going to play out.

At this point, I more or less spend all of my game time, live on twitch channel, the only exception is if I only have a few minutes, (which at this time I spend with Binding of Isaac, or a turn or two with Total War Shogun 2), and to be honest, I love it, we’ve had some awesome people coming through hanging out and chatting about games it really does provide me with a new vehicle to talk about the games I’m playing, and in most ways it is much better than the blog because it’s interactive, and spontaneous and that’s awesome, but it puts me in a bit of a hard spot when it comes to how I allocate my game time. Most of the time I feel compelled to play something through to completion before moving on to the next thing, and I think next month I may run into issues doing that because I tend to play new releases and this is really the first time since I started casting that I’m going to hit a game that is going to run me into a new release of a game that I’d really like to play where it’s not really possible to get through it.

I have high hopes for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, it seems like an action rpg that hits all the right notes with me, I’m expecting good story, good character development (in terms of ability), and skill based action combat, all in a (seldom used) colorful cartoony setting. It’s a direction I’d like to see some more RPGs go and so I really hope this game does well even if it’s not flawless.

Reckoning will be quick on the heels of a Final Fantasy XIII-2 release that I’ve been waiting for (talking about on my stream a lot). When I finished with FF13 I didn’t feel as though I was done with that world (even after finishing a second playthough of the game on the stream), and despite its well documented shortcomings I enjoyed. It sounds like some of that stuff has been addressed in a not so meaningful way, and they sort of threw some systems on top of it to sate the masses of FF fans who were offended by its last release, but to be honest, I don’t know that I’ve ever hated a final fantasy game (I totally avoided 10-2, that might have been the one that breaks this statement), for me it’s always been the story that pushes me through the many hours of content, and I expect there to be a good story here, but with ‘sequel expectations’ I imagine it will be a little watered downed (this is total speculation on my part, I haven’t heard a thing that actually suggests that is the case).

I recently replayed FF13 on stream to get ready for this release, and there was quite a few viewers that were around for the most of it, I expect some of them will be back for 13-2, and if you’re not one of those people you should be! Come hang out and watch me get my ass kicked

In any case, the point is, I may be doing a little switching between Reckoning and FF13-2 depending on my mood, if it doesn’t work I’ll likely just stick with one and go back aftewards (and probably start over). With any luck I’ll have them both done by the time Mass Effect 3 releases and we won’t have any further issues. On that note, my Mass Effect 2 refresher run is in progress, and will continue tonight! Come on by my twitch channel and hang out!