Final Fantasy XIII was a lot of things but it wasn’t uninteresting. XIII-2 technically does a lot of things better as a video game. It’s far less linear, the combat mechanics are available right from the start, you can explore areas without constant combat encounters, talk to NPCs, side quests etc. On paper this is a far better experience. Sometimes it is for sure a better game, but in the end I reflected on my experience and found it to stick with me far less than XIII.

XIII-2 is pretty good. It retains the amazing paradigm system, but rarely did combat encounters require me to problem solve as often as XIII. The level design is more open but the timeline system makes the levels feel completely disconnected. The story is kind of easier to grasp early on, but I miss the high concepts of XIII. XIII was interesting to dissect and learn about the story despite its low focus on world building. Somehow XIII-2 feels less like a cohesive world. The lower budget is also incredibly obvious. It feels more like a filler episode at times than a direct sequel. I do really like Noel as a character though. Despite his loose presence, Caius was a relatively cool villain as well.

Everything here would probably make for a far superior final fantasy game but it’s lower budget and polish really held it back. It’s a texture thing (a general feeling type of texture - not a literal visual textures thing). Stuff like the environments, character models, UI design etc just felt like a massive step down. That’s not a huge problem; I dig the Ps2 vibe this game has. It has the vibe of a lost ps2 gem. It’s not a hidden gem though, it’s a sequel to a massive final fantasy game. I think that association is what holds it back for many. It’s not that it’s a bad game necessarily, it has a lot of aspects that would make a fantastic game. Yet even for me it’s hard to look past what it came from and see it as something fully unique.

I do want to point out the ending chunk of the game though. I loved it. Without spoiling it there’s a point where the story finally clicks with me, but it came after a long period of what felt like meandering around a bunch of levels collecting items. It comes around and wins me over a bit though. The ending is so shockingly dour and upsetting and I love that. Clearly it was that way to lead into Lightning Returns, but I respect that they went that direction. It’s great stuff!

I enjoyed my time with XIII-2. It was an attempt at a new original story with mostly new characters which is really cool. It varied gameplay far more often and strayed from becoming too repetitive. It has the Crazy Chocobo song. It’s fun! It was pretty short too which helped a lot. People always said this game was way better than XIII because it directly addressed the criticisms of XIII and designed a game around that. It was an apology of a game. Personally something about that made it less interesting to me. XIII radiates confidence in what it is even if it’s not always great. I’m not even sure if XIII is a better game overall. XIII-2 felt ashamed of XIII and just wanted to make fans happy. It succeeded in some areas and had a lot of decent original ideas of its own, but my conclusion with these 2 games is that XIII-2 may be a better game on paper, but XIII is the game I end up having more respect and admiration for despite its glaring issues.

I remember jumping on this game right after platinuming FF13, thinking it would be more or less the same. It was hard imagining what a sequel could look like, given how final the ending was for Lightning and friends. I suppose too much was invested into the world building, lore, and canonical history to not explore further.

Taking place immediately after the first game, you play as Lightning’s sister, Serah, on her journey to find Lightning who has gone missing. Fal'Cie, L'Cie and Cie'th are all still around and just as confusing as the first game, although they play a much smaller role in this entry. The similarties between both entries are apparent right as you boot the title screen; everything that was green is now pink, everything that was thin is now bold. One thing I found to be unfortunate is how FF13-2 did not share the same crystalline tone and aesthetic that the first game had. Everything is bolder, fatter, and quicker paced; gone are the sleek menus with animated character portraits. While the game has its own unique appeal with the addition of rock battle OST and faster animations, it’s too unlike the first game for my liking. I guess it’s a matter of expectation.

While Noel's design felt fresh and reminscent of prior Final Fantasy games, the remaining cast felt sparse and unmemorable. Caius on the otherhand, was the perfect villain for a game like ths. It's no surprise that his silhouette is featured on the game's logo; his dark purple appearance strikingly compliments Lightning's softer pink design. Giving the adversary a face, a name, and a goal makes the entire journey feel that much more cohesive.

One of the core gameplay changes would be the removal of a third permanent party member. For the entire game, the only two party members you’ll play as are Serah and Noel (excluding guest characters). The third party member will be a monster that you’re able to recruit during battle. The upside to this is that it diversifies the amount of skills and attacks you can have in your party. The downside is that you’re less likely to get attached to the cast due to its tiny size. Every cutscene and story beat will primarily star Serah and Noel.

The way FF13-2 addressed the first game’s criticism of being too linear was to allow the you to teleport to previous areas, and also allowing you to visit alternate versions of areas that take place in parallel timelines. A neat idea, but given that each alternate area felt far too similar to the original area, it really just felt like you had a handful of areas that you were cycling between.

The vibes of the first game aren't entirely here, going more for a J-Pop ""pink"" aesthetic with Serah's costume mimicking an idol's dress. There is also a less foreboding tone overall, with the lack of a countdown on the character's mortalities. The difficulty was about on par as the first the game, without the massive weapons grind. The platinum trophy also posed very little challenge aside from finishing all the side-quests and hunting down all monsters. An upgrade from FF13 in some ways, and a downgrade in others.

Overall Rating: 80
Personal Difficulty: 40
Trophy Hunting Difficulty: 45

FFXIII got a lot of negative feedback upon release. By the time I got round to playing it I was expecting the worse. Instead, what I experienced was a passable and somewhat entertaining story told with style. Its major criticism was its linearity. The ‘corridor shooter’ of RPGs! Well, I’d rather that than an open world game with no coherent story. (hello Dark Souls, ‘sup?)

RPGs should be focused on immersing you in a story, they should not be obsessed with statistics, collectables and convoluted gameplay. FFXIII could have been improved in quite a few ways, sure. But I appreciated the attention to detail, the fantastic soundtrack, the paradigm battle system that was simple yet effective, giving the feeling of tactics whilst not taxing the brain. The game taught the battle and exploration concepts seamlessly and had an exhaustive help system. (seriously Dark Souls, ‘sup?)

With the amount of goodwill I read for FFXIII's sequel which apparently catered to fan demands for an open world, I approached it with optimistic hope. Bad idea. Two hours in and I had lost hope completely.

It was one of those instances where you start something, and every five minutes your heart sinks with disappointment. “Oh no… no, why? Oh no.. wait, seriously?”

First off, starting the game with an epic battle that I have no investment in, not knowing what the stakes are, who I’m fighting or why, is such an inept way to start a story, let alone a game. It left me cold and cynical as to the direction of the game.

Then, the more I played, the more I could see the developers were catering to a demographic that loves what I loathe with a passion: collectible hunting & fetch/kill quests.

I’ve often lamented the gaming medium’s preoccupation with fetch/kill quests, and it pains me to see it again. Though I wasn’t exactly expecting an FF game to buck trends dramatically, it’s still depressing that the only diversions from FFXIII-2’s main story is all about collecting items in the most convoluted non-enjoyable ways possible: go somewhere until you can’t progress, backtrack, go somewhere until you can’t progress, backtrack, try to fight monster, not strong enough, backtrack, grind for eternity. And fetch items/kill monsters for witless NPCs devoid of personality, emotion, common sense and any semblance of humanity.

The game is somewhat garnished with the concept of taming monsters you’ve fought (another form of collectible!), like a variation of Pokemon, then levelling them up as members of your team. Just grinding over and over again like an addict.

A major diversion from its predecessor is the fact that this time round your main team only consists of two members: Lightning’s sister Serah and a random time-travelling dude with secrets who decides to help her for the entirety of the tale, which spanned 46 hours of game time for me, and who knows how many weeks or months of story-time for the characters.

He is her companion for no compelling reason other than: “yeah, I don’t know you at all, we just met ten minutes ago but I’m going to make overbearing statements about how I’m going to protect you every five minutes till the end of the game” while somehow avoiding any kind of sexual or platonic tension at all.

The story is incoherent gibberish, even more so than usual for a FF game. It retcons the climax of FFXIII, and twists and turns it beyond recognition, such is the risk when you use time-travel in your story. There are fleeting moments of potential, seeing the impact of one timeline reverberate into another, seeing characters achieve the same goal while living in different eras, but that’s all this game is, just a collage of potentials, none of them realised.

At times our two protagonists cause so much havoc by travelling through time and changing events that they’re perceived to be the enemy, but its only briefly touched upon before being washed away with cliched bullshit. Of course you’re not the enemy, you’re two dimensional good guys fighting the weakest villain of the series.

FFXIII-2 is visually a step down from its predecessor, as if they’ve taken all the waste from the FXIII archives and regurgitated it. Everything feels less smooth, less polished. Even the hair was animated better in FFXIII.

The soundtrack is mostly awful whenever it’s not re-using FFXIII’s awesome music. I love FFXIII’s soundtrack, do you know how hard it is to make music that doesn’t remind you of anything on Earth!? FFXIII's composer is a genius.

In FFXIII-2, at one point I hopped on a red chocobo to travel the Archlyte Steppe and suddenly a laughably shitty faux-neo metal type track started blaring in my headphones. Surely the lowest point of the franchise.

Fighting optional bosses was an afterthought in FFXIII, but it’s pushed to the forefront with its sequel, giving you the opportunity to tame them or collect a fragment collectable from their corpse.

FFXIII-2 has somehow inexplicably dumbed down the crystarium levelling up system, and made it overly complicated at the same time. You still receive CP by killing monsters and advance through a constellation type maze to level up various areas of expertise such as ‘commando’ or ‘ravager’ but the aesthetic design was needlessly revamped so at first you’re not quite sure who or what you’re levelling up, or more crucially what ability you’re levelling up towards. Whoever redesigned it needs to stay the hell away from the franchise.

What was hailed as non-linearity; what the witless fan base was foaming at the mouth for, is presented here via time portals that make you revisit levels from the first game, in an albeit creative way because you’re visiting them in different time periods, however thanks to the shit writing, it’s not as fun or creative as it could have been.

You often encounter NPCs who give the most turgid pithy dialogue, “wait, how did you find that broken tablet I asked you for? OMG, you went back in time!” etc, etc.

The more I think about this game the more annoyed I get with the writing, it’s written for ten year olds, so hackneyed and trite, so obvious, so hand-holding, it’s infuriating.

Other random shit:

> I barely bought anything with gil the entire game, a first for me in a FF game. All I can remember buying is a handful of weapons whenever I spotted any with higher stats than what I was carrying, and that’s it. I had 100,000 gil by the end of the game.

> 99% of the floating orbs littering the game gave absolutely nothing of worth.

> I used potions for the first few hours until I tamed a healing monster, and then never used any other items throughout, except for one. See at the bottom of this list.

> The bulk of animation budget seems to have gone into any flashback scene involving Lightning, and the climax.

> Whoever decided Lightning should sound like an emotionless robot should stay the hell away from the franchise.

> Holy moly, the music that starts blaring when you hop on a red chocobo. Seriously.

> I don’t get the hate for Mog, I thought it was a cute creature. The sound it makes when you throw it is hilarious.

> Overheard a random citizen say this as I walked past: “I didn’t know he liked them so young!”

> If you’re gonna play this game please remember this: bring a load of wound potions to the last battle. Trust me.

My favourite part of the game was a future city called Academia, which is basically the city from The Fifth Element, but Final Fantasy style. I wish the game was mostly set in this futurescape, it’s my favourite style of speculative future city vision. Flying cars, neon lights!

So after 46 hours, my journey in FFXIII-2 led up to a typically difficult FF final boss battle that I struggled with a tad, even though I had nearly all combat roles maxed out. This is not a complaint though, as I enjoyed the challenge. The story also ends on a massive and dark cliffhanger that had me scratching my head thanks to the story being completely random and arbitrary in true FF fashion. I mean, it makes internal sense, but requires a lot of hand-holding, terrible exposition, and the usual suspension of disbelief to get there.

Of all its faults, the lack of a strong story and dialogue is what ruined this game for me beyond redemption, it’s the game’s biggest crime. RPGs are meant to be about the narrative above and beyond anything else. Otherwise it’s not an RPG, you may as well call it something else, a strategy adventure game.

Lately I’ve been very disappointed by RPGs. Skyrim had a painfully generic story that was almost as bad as FFXIII-2’s. Dragon Age is nothing without Tolkien’s influence, not so much wearing it on its sleeve but rather wearing it like Leslie Nielson wearing a full-body condom in a Naked Gun movie. Demon Souls and Dark Souls have no narrative at all! How ironic it is then, that the strongest stories of the PS3 generation have come from other genres entirely: Uncharted, Dead Space, Grand Theft Auto 4, Red Dead Redemption, Max Payne 3, Spec Ops: The Line. Any of them RPGs? Nope.

I find myself in the ranks of fans who have a dismissive attitude to Square Enix. It seems their pioneering days are long behind them as they struggle to hold onto tradition while catering to the whims of their current fan base. I wish they’d just ignore all this and concentrate on bringing us a great story well told.

Note: this review was written by me around 2013, and suffice to say my opinion of the FF franchise has not gotten any better in the years since...

Fixed many of the issues FFXIII had, namely the pacing, linearity, and limitation of controlling only one character in the party. Felt like a more focused RPG experience instead of the weird inbred mashup of RPG and action that FFXIII was. The story was also actually coherent this time (for the most part at least, it’s still a post-FFVII squenix game so, y’know)

Overall, I would recommend people interested in the FFXIII mini-franchise to skip the first one and just start with XIII-2 (based on what I’ve heard, I expect I’ll also end up recommending skipping Lightning Returns but that remains to be seen)

Technically played on the Steam Deck, which was actually a good experience. A confusing one to gather my thoughts on..by itself, it’s a good game with a unique time travel traversal mechanic and story. The combat is just as fun as the previous game and improved on it. The puzzles and fragment hunting can get pretty annoying but guides fix that issue. I think as a standalone FF game, it would be stronger, but it does feel like an odd filler episode after 13, only because the jump from abandoning the Fal’cie plot/lore and replace it with a time travel story and a new antagonist seemingly out of no where felt jarring. Any connection to previous lore/story in 13 was minimal, to the point it felt like this time travel story could have been in any FF game really. It feels like we aren’t even in the same world of Pulse and Cocoon (beyond visually), mostly abandoning all the main characters from the prior game. It’s not a BAD game by any means, it’s just a weird one that feels really different from the previous game, and not nearly as much focus on characters. It doesn’t feel like a sequel, it feels much more like a spinoff game that takes place in the same world.

Minor lore spoilers: We go from a game where the Fal’cie are desperately trying to open Etro’s gate by destroying Cocoon in order to awaken god, to one where these Fal’cie suddenly lose the motivation to summon their makers/god for no obvious reason (besides maybe losing their control over humans after humans realize they have free will). The person to replace the plot of opening Etro’s Gate to bring about the Chaos and eventual events in LR, now goes to Caius, but his motivations are entirely different and mostly unrelated to any of the lore in the prior game. Etro is the only thing that really ties these two games together loosely, but you have to read about this in data logs and novels, which to me is an indication on the failure of the writers to weave together these games in a more logical way that reveals itself during gameplay. If you have to read content outside of the game to get the full picture, I think that’s a great sign of weakness. Etro is basically the catalyst of all the bad events that take place in both games, but suddenly introducing her seemingly out of no where in 13-2 heightens this disconnect. That being said, the ending was pretty good with an unexpected cliffhanger that had me very intrigued. I liked 13 more for the characters, as their motivations were stronger and more fleshed out, and the overall lore of the Fal’cie/gods. Also, soundtrack is a BANGER as always for this series, probably my favorite game soundtrack ever. Overall, I liked this game, even if it has some strange game design choices and a confusing existence.

Não é um jogo perfeito, prefiro o primeiro da trilogia pela coragem, mas esse aqui tá bem longe de ser ruim. O fato da sequência não sustentar as mudanças do primeiro por causa do choro dos acadêmicos do Final Fantasy me incomoda um pouco, eram justamente os elementos cativantes. A sequência deixa alguns de lado e volta a apostar em algumas coisas já consagradas, o que não é de todo ruim.
Mais um jogo divertido que não atingiu o potencial que poderia pois foi feito no momento em que arriscar com jogos já não era mais vantajoso pras empresas. E porque nerd é chato pra caramba.

man it's like they fixed every Minor Annoyance i had with the game in this sequel, it's incredible how much better everything feels

one of the best, if not the best soundtracks in the series

as i sit here watching the ending, cocoon plummets into pulse, and i gotta say, if they had the tech and know how to build "a new cocoon" why didn't they just like dismantle the old one slowly and safely over centuries

it's the one big like "what were you thinking" i just couldn't let go of the whole time i was playing ha ha ha

and then

y'know aside from that one hangup i mentioned i thought it was pretty decent, the story, and usually i'm not big on the idea that a bad ending can ruin an otherwise good story but uhh... lol she died, i bet she comes back as an evil zombie antagonist in lightning returns!! guess i'll find out... soon

i think the game structure and stuff is all really good too, like if not for the attachment to dogshit ff13 i'd probably recommend it to people (provided i know they're willing to put up with some anime-ass shit)

oh also it's a terrible pc port, but that's not exactly a new thing for square, and there are good mod workarounds at least

Playing this has given me a new found appreciation for Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth. Anyone complaining about that game going off the rails and becoming too much like Kingdom Hearts needs to see what this game does with the world set up XIII.

I'll start with my positive thoughts on the game. For something that was made in 18 months, it's actually quite impressive. The bulk of the design work for the combat was obviously already done but there are some smart, slight changes here that improve upon the already fantastic battle system. Being able to change leaders and no more 2 second animation when changing paradigms for the first time in a battle are welcome additions.
It's also a much less linear game, clearly a response to the criticisms of the incredibly straightforward area's of the previous game. Gone is the corridor level design in favour of more open area's with actual people to talk to. There's also the inclusion of a handful of minigames to break up the monotony that was ever present in the previous game. Clearly the developers understood that it wasn't just the level design that made sections of the previous game feel like a drag.

Unfortunately, the game just didn't have the time or scope to make these changes meaningful. It's the very definition of missing the wood for the trees.

The combat is vastly improved, but the game's difficulty curve is a complete mess. I fought most battles I encountered and did what I thought to be a conservative amount of side content and found the majority of the game to incredibly easy... until the final dungeon/boss which then became way too difficult. In 13, the potential to level up was capped so the developers were always able to design fights around a very small range of party power levels and thus, every fight felt engaging and challenging, but not too challenging. Obviously that approach was met with some backlash but the alternative this game presents left the combat feeling unsatisfying.
I did find it interesting that the majority of battles don't give that much CP, and the majority of that levelling currency will come from the side content so this difficulty spike at the end really encourages you to go back and do more of the side content. However, when I finally returned to the last dungeon area I had completely outleveled everything, including the final boss. The difficulty curve in 13 was so perfect that it's a shame it wasn't able to be recreated here.

The area's being open is also a nice idea, but the area's are filled with nothingness and just leads to constant backtracking for quests. There's nothing interesting and meaningful in the world. Gone are the enemies roaming the world and in their place are randomly placed quest items that only serve as a way to keep you running back and forth with nothing interesting going on. I'm completely fine with reused area's/assets, but when you're asking me to run through an area for the 4th or 5th time, looking for invisible items to throw my moogle at, it ends up feeling just as tedious as the previous game.

I'm not even gonna talk about the moogle throwing mechanic.

The story itself isn't totally without merit. It's a non linear time travel story that doesn't get over complicated, which I think is commendable. I also think Caius, the villain, is actually pretty well fleshed out and lightyears ahead of the previous game's villain, who is basically nonexistent.

However, the bulk of your time is spent with Noel, Serah and the Moogle and unfortunately they're just not as interesting as the villain. In 13, the party was diverse and lead to a plethora of interesting interactions but here, Serah and Noel don't really play off of each other that well, and their relationship wears out it's welcome sooner rather than later.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment in the story for me was the treatment of the party members from the previous game. While X-2 felt like a fun epilogue that allowed you to get a glimpse of those character' lives after the events of X, XIII-2 basically doesn't even try to continue the excellent character work of XIII. I guess it comes with the territory in being a less character driven story, but Snow (the literal love interest of one of the main characters) being relegated to a single chapter that teases things that are not resolved in any way is a travesty. Sazh is basically non existent and used as an incentive for DLC. Vanille and Fang are completely absent (which given the circumstances, I was completely fine with) and Lightning, while important to the story, has only a handful of appearances. Hope is arguably the only character that has a satisfying arc, but even he is fodder for the time travel shenanigans at hand.

Ultimately, there's stuff I enjoyed about the game but when it comes down to it, this game feels incredibly rushed and the interesting idea's presented are both underdeveloped and ignore the strengths of the previous game.

I did like the ending, and I'm happy to have crossed another Final Fantasy game off the to play list, but I still think this is a bad game that has no respect for the story and world of XIII.