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...

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.

It's hard for me to decide which I hate more as a sequel to an FF game I loved, this or X-2. Both of them manage to do what feels like irreparable damage to the epic tales that their predecessors were.

The entire story is founded on a stupid fucking retcon that cheapens the ending of XIII, and it only gets worse from there. I've watched music videos that have a more coherent plot than whatever this pile of shit is. It hamfists in elements of time travel and parallel worlds that are not a part of the original game's mythos at all, brings in an unwanted and unnecessary character for no apparent reason except as the writer's OC in this fanfiction that somehow gaslit its way to official status. Don't be fucking fooled. It's all a sham: the story is nonsensical, meandering and entirely at odds with all that is good in the world. I absolutely despise stories like these that constantly use big words like 'chronicle paradox' and 'forbidden history' and 'spacetime vortex' in a vain attempt to hide the fact that they absolutely SUCK. They suck in every single one of the multiple universes the writers use as an excuse for their storytelling ineptitude.

I couldn't wait for this game to shut the fuck up, I stopped caring entirely. And true, just like XIII before it, it looks dazzling, the visuals are so good that it feels like playing a CGI film, but it's hard to appreciate when it stands for absolutely nothing, and that little shit-gremlin of a moglin keeps yelling KUPO KUPO KUPOOOO in every scene so we can have some kawaii shit to go with the countless layers of obfuscation that drive this plot into the ground. If I had a gun I'd shoot that fucking hell-cherub so fast.

The gameplay isn't good either. I don't begrudge Final Fantasy XIII for its linearity at all; this game on the other hand is filled with false choices that are just time-wasting mechanics posing as open-endedness. For example, early on you're presented with the 'choice' to either fight a boss head-on or walk three paces along an alternative path to get a device that weakens him. My manly nature dictates that I fight him head-on without resorting to trickery, but he will one-hit kill your party, so you're forced to take the second option anyway. Then why is it a choice at all? That's right: to pretend this game isn't every bit as linear as its predecessor, when it is, when it's a fucking SHAM. To waste your fucking time. The game also really likes to recycle its bosses; to interrupt boss fights with cinematic moments and QTEs and cutscenes; to basically do all that video games of this time were derided for in such an especially egregious fashion that even I found them annoying.

The developers go all in on deceiving players into thinking they have any input into the story, by having four dialogue options pop up with a hilariously fancy 'Live Trigger!' splash in every conversation. Fuck them too. I don't get at all what's the appeal of these 'choices' that don't change one iota of the game, and the way they're presented like such a huge feature is amusing to see in the same way watching a Lilliputian attempt to score a three-point field goal would be amusing. Having only two party members and a rotating cast of captive Pokemon doesn't do it for me either. The battle system feels lesser than its predecessor with inconsequential features like Wounds (lowering your maximum HP) put in only for the sake of having more new features.

The music is nice, but I don't feel it melds into the game well pretty often - it's like they composed a lot of good tracks in a vacuum and then overlaid them into the game without too much consideration for context. In a game where the voice actors can't even get the inflections of their lines right, that would be too much to ask.

This game is a disservice and a blight on its predecessor, which I absolutely loved. It should have been left to rot on whatever page of Fanfiction.net it was uploaded to.

In short, I am mildly upset with this game.

"Let's make a sequel that ignores the worldbuilding of the original to focus on new wacky time travel lore, knock down the playable cast from 6 to 2, and harass you with a moogle navi that you can punish by throwing off cliffs!"

Sounds like an idea of the unhinged, one that would be laughed out of the room at pre-production stage, right? Nope—these ideas made their way into the final product, because somehow everyone involved in the decision making process thought this was a good idea.

And they... were right??? This game has no right to be as good as it is, it's a complete overreaction to all the criticisms of FF13, and yet it somehow just works. Making the main cast Lightning's mostly absent sister and this random guy from the future, complete with a cutesy mascot, sounds like the premise of a creatively bankrupt sequel; instead, it leads to one of the most memorable trios in the Final Fantasy series. Serah was already a decent character in the original, especially considering her role as a plot device damsel, and here they capitalise on that by allowing her to shine as a protagonist, on a journey with very real stakes to restore her old life. Noel slots in excellently with the new lore, has amazing chemistry with Serah—without creating romantic girl/boy duo #124812490 in media—and provides a very emotional story that left more impact on me than I was expecting.

Hell, even Mog is pretty lovable; and when he isn't, you can just throw him over the edge and listen to his sweet screams! Ludonarrative dissonance, pfft, more like ludonarrative resonance.

Battle wise I unfortunately don't think this sequel is better, it's one of the areas I feel the original was stronger. The improved QoL such as removing the long animation of the first paradigm shift (thank god) is appreciated, but overall it's just... a bit too easy for my tastes, and lacks the expertly designed game balance of FF13. The monster collector system is a fun idea, but I found it a little jank and grindy, and would've preferred a third character instead. Also, Serah and Noel are garbage synergists!! Either you infuse a chimera of abilities through a monster grindfest, or accept that debuffs are The Way this game. I'll remember you, haste...

Thankfully, exploration is here to save the day! Unlike FF13, which has the openness of my bathroom outside of the Archylte Steppe, 13-2 understands that it's nice being about to revisit areas and walk about a little. Each area is fairly small, and to call them "open areas" would be a ludicrous exaggeration outside of the returning Archylte Steppe, but the way they get around this is quite clever—time travel! There's so many hidden gates to find that take you to completely optional areas and time periods, it really makes it feel like you're exploring the 4th dimension. I wouldn't say the approach to exploration is perfect: a major blemish is how absurdly hidden most quest items and even some story items are, practically expecting most players to have a guide in hand, along with a bizarre lack of sidequest markers. But hey, I still had fun screwing around!

Encounter rate is a bit high for my tastes, though at least unlike FF13, it's pretty easy to avoid most enemies. The big exception to this being a certain "Cie'th city", with such outrageously frequent encounters that I'm convinced they didn't playtest this part of the final product—they even interrupt active voice dialogue! Why is the active voice dialogue longer than the time it takes for battles to start!

I do like the fun little puzzles they throw at you, though I do have to say the clock puzzles are an absurd spike in difficulty, you go from relatively easy puzzles to this... monstrosity. I mean, it's not bad and actually decently big brained, but it's a bit much to expect from a game not designed for hardcore puzzle gamers! Not to mention giving some time limits: it's pure evil, I tell you. Good thing there's helpful tools online to solve these so you don't have to git gud—of course, I'd never resort to cheating like that, I totally solved all these puzzles on my own, haha...

Music-wise I was pretty darn excited to get to this game after hearing how good the tracks were in theatrhythm, and it certainly delivered there. Like FFX, this soundtrack takes full advantage of having more than one composer, delivering a huge variety of tracks with their own unique styles, along with a bunch of beautiful and fun vocal themes. Highlights being: Plains of Eternity, Warrior Goddess, Full Speed Ahead, New Bodhum, Historia Crux, Worlds Collide, Yuel's Theme, Crazy Chocobo (sue me), Noel's Theme - Final Journey -, Unseen Abyss, and 'Closing Credits' which basically collates all the best tracks in the game under a deceptively bland title.

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STORY SPOILERS START HERE
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Wow, time travel! This should be a dreadful idea for a sequel, but it ends up working oddly well. They quickly make it clear that time travel has limitations and consequences, with only one true timeline being allowed, along with so many ways of accidentally creating world-ending paradoxes through butterfly effects. Our protagonists can't go wherever the hell they want either, as they are guided through gates that take them to static points in history. In fact, most of the game is really about undoing the paradoxes created by a certain reckless goddess we never meet, as she's too busy dying in the corner. Etro is a unique take on divinity—unlike the Fal'cie which are predictably manipulative and apathetic, Etro's benevolence towards humanity is her undoing, as every blessing she attempts to bestow leads to equivalent curses that doom others. Even better, that's the motivation of our villain: he's a bit tired of the goddess ruining the timeline by 'saving' people, causing the seeress he's been sworn to protect to keep dying as her brain gets microwaved by forced visions of every little change in history.

Caius makes for an absolutely fantastic antagonist with a sympathetic and downright reasonable motive—erasing the concept of time probably isn't a bad idea when you live in the apocalypse—along with high emotional stakes in facing him, being the mentor of Noel. While Yuel is a giant plot device with little personality beyond Nice and Good, this becomes a non-issue with how well she is used in the story, and it honestly is somewhat believable she's become so emotionless and unaffected considering what she's been exposed to throughout all her lifetimes. This makes Noel and Caius' relationship very interesting, as they both have the same goal, just drastically different ways of going about it.

Noel himself is a great deuteragonist—while the way we slowly uncover his memories is very plot convenient, it ends up unravelling in an emotionally satisfying way as we're exposed to his past and the hopeless world he lives in, where everything is dead and the only people he has left both die and vanish into the black mist of villainhood respectively. By the end he's practically on a suicide mission, until Etro saves him: it's impossible not to feel for the poor guy.

Speaking of Etro, we have Etro's Champion here in the form of Lightning. I'll be frank, I don't think this is an organic continuation of Lightning's role from 13—in that game she was a fairly down to earth person, so turning her into this servant of the goddess feels beyond excessive and doesn't do much for her character. We also don't really get to see much of a relationship get built between her and Caius, despite them both being on the cover and the entire story revolving around their eternal conflict on the edge of time, which is a bit disappointing. However, they do stick the landing in the finale to the story, where she is unable to prevent Serah's death, and forced to accept her failure as she enters an eternal crystal sleep.

Hope's role in this game, on the other hand, feels like a very organic continuation of his role in 13, now pushing the world into a new age through his leadership developed throughout the original game. I found it interesting how he paralleled Etro, in that his good intentions often led to... many problems, until we hit the climax where he creates a new Cocoon called Bhunivelze (????? Hope you madman, read up on your FNC lore!) Alyssa is an interesting character with a fun twist, though unfortunately we don't get a good resolution for her... outside of a novel apparently? I hear that novel also explains why Snow is a L'cie again, talk about cut content lol. Also rip Sazh, he really got the short end of the stick this game... I won't speculate as to why, as I feel that's heading in very dangerous territory!

Climax of the game is absolutely fantastic, with a really strong confrontation between Serah & Noel and Caius, ending in expected tragedy D: Then it gets even worse when oops, Serah died and we all failed, Caius got his way after all! I like the extra bonus ending that reveals Caius planned this all along, one of the rare villains to actually succeed in his goal and win against the protagonists. Though I will say, I'm pretty disappointed at the lack of Noel x Caius content, the angst practically writes itself! I guess I'm going to have to make my own contributions ;p

Paradox endings are all quite fun, ranging from serious to completely absurd, I love it. There's a ton of endgame content that ups the difficulty quite a bit, though I wasn't in the mood to grind up all my monsters to get too involved in it.

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STORY SPOILERS END HERE
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So yeah, overall this game is surprisingly great! For a sequel built on such a ridiculous premise, it ends up playing out shockingly well, and delivers with a really-well done and emotionally resonant story. There are flaws, such as the combat being a bit of a sidegrade from ff13, and practically requiring a guide if you truly want to see everything the game has to offer, and it's admittedly quite low budget compared to the gorgeous graphics of its predecessor. PC port is also REALLY bad, I had to use like 10+ mods and mess around with my GPU settings to get it in a decent state—you sure aren't getting 60fps in certain areas without bruteforcing it. But, BUT, this game is something really special all in all, and I really would recommend it to anyone who wants a shorter, more experimental FF with a strong story, even to those who didn't care for FF13.

this game fixed every issue i had with ff13 gameplay.
the soundtrack is amazing, gameplay style is veeeery enjoyable for what it is and the game is no longer a corridor simulator

very nice
also noel and serah are really cute:3

The good:

-Better paced gameplay/story than the first
-Music is very very good
-The story is good but confusing if you are not paying attention, as we are dealing with time travel.
-The ability to go back to previous areas at any time
-The ability to replay story bits
-Challenging endgame

The bad:

-The crystarium system has been changed. Now every class shares the same sphere tree. Stats increased with every node depend on the class leveled up and if the node is big or small.
This is not explained, so you can potentially get very low stats, which makes the endgame borderline impossible. And there is no way to reset it.
My advice is look for a guide and learn how it works.
-The difficulty in the story is minimal. So much in fact, that fights often feel like a chore, as there is no challenge until the last couple chapters and the endgame.
-Those tedious clock puzzles.
They're fun, but only if they're not randomized (which they almost always are)
-A LOT of reused areas. And while this doesn't seem like a problem at first (as the point is to travel in time to those areas to see what has changed...) Almost nothing really changes... ever. Except for music, weather, and NPCs in there. Not even containers change, so there is no point of re-exploring these areas for loot most of the time. But you will because there will be a quest that makes you walk through the entire map like twice in order to complete it. It will be tedious and annoying, especially because you can't interact with a lot of things while riding the a chocobo.

The ugly:
-If you play this on PC, you will need to install some patches to make the game playable, and not crash every minute