Half-Ass Gaming Reviews: Final Fantasy XIII-2

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FFXIII was one of those games that made players doubt the Final Fantasy series. I don’t think anyone asked for, or expected a sequel. However, it looks as if Square Enix has something to prove, so we’re going to go ahead and roll with the punches. FFXIII-2 hopes to spread out the world that restricted you in the previous game, while giving you a more fleshed out skill system. Does it deliver with all of these promises, or should we throw this gasping franchise back to sea?

FFXIII-2’s plot is something that you’ll just have to ignore beyond the obvious stigma… “Go out and save the world”. Attempting to make something else out of it would be completely and utterly ridiculous. It takes place three years after the events of FFXIII, and players are placed in the roles of Serah and Noel Kreiss. Serah, is the sister of the protagonist who saved the world in the previous game. While Noel, is a time traveler from the future who has seen the end of time. It’s up to these two to leap back and forth through time, and stop Humanity’s future from becoming a disaster area.

There are a lot of sub-plots and some cameos from characters of the first game. Each of these characters makes a brief showing, and the reunions aren’t really that interesting. The player is strewn along into these times participate in fan service. Otherwise, you get a vague story about the future and the past constantly changing. Just so Serah can meet up with Lightning, and save the world all in one fell swoop.

The story isn’t going to keep you playing the game; it’s the game play and the new mechanics that’ll sway your favor. The combat system from XIII returns with a much improved customization system. Instead of a third active character, players can capture monsters to use in this slot. Each monster that the player captures can be used as a magic, tank, melee, or healing class. They each come with status boosts that can be used to fuse into stronger monsters.  The more powerful monsters have the better abilities, but can be used to make your older monsters tougher via fusion… it’s like Pokemon all over again!

There are hundreds of hours that players can lose from this feature alone. Running around in circles waiting to get that fifteenth purple Chocobo to appear can drain SO much time. Players can also gather materials from defeated monsters to upgrade their own, or buy better weapons and accessories from the vendor. So the game play itself is actually pretty engaging, especially if you’re the kind of person that likes grinding levels in video games. I am one of those types of people, so I had a blast just running around stabbing the strongest monsters in the face.

Another impressive feature in the game would have to be the time lock system. Players can shift back and forth through various timelines they’ve opened enough branches for. Time can easily be reversed and the player can make different choices that lead to different paths. All of this can be done without losing the previous progression, and it can be reverted with the press of a button. This reveals a great many endings that the players can discover, and offers tons of replay value amongst other bonus features.

It’s easy to get lost in the wealth of content available. As FFXIII-2 piles on the mini-games and has plans to dole out even more via DLC. Not all of the games are impressive, but they can be a good distraction if that’s your interest. Even the vast amount of side-quests can be appealing, even if they follow the rudimentary formula of fetch X item for me. There can be no complaints about the open and accessible features of this Final Fantasy.

Now what would a Final Fantasy game be without some pretty amazing graphics? I don’t know… and luckily we don’t have to guess with XIII-2. It’s chock full of the famous CGI scenes we’re used to from Square Enix, and the in-game models of the Main Characters and monsters are gorgeous. Not to mention the audio is crisp and the music is lively, so it definitely isn’t a game that doesn’t tickle those senses. It’s just a shame that the same booming fanfare plays after each and every battle.

While we’re on the subject, I’ve noticed that all of the side characters act like robots. It reminds me of the old Sega Dreamcast series, Shenmue. The voice acting for a good majority of the supporting Non-player characters is wooden. The animations are stilted and stiff, and the camera even pans around awkwardly… sometimes even blocking off the character completely from view. It’s hard to feign interest when so many other games do this much better.

At the heart of the matter, Final Fantasy XIII-2 is much better than the first one. It buries players into a wealth of content, but struggles to sell an interesting story at all. Final Fantasy XIII-2, receives a C+ from Half-Ass Gaming. It excels at being an open world experience that players wanted, but the loss of story really hurts the former king of JRPG’s.