did all the bastok nation quests and the main expansion storyline
cute seeing how ffxiii-2's opening retconning the ending to the previous game has precedent in the franchise. here it's done in an extra funny fashion because the retcon is revealing these weird guys you met during the base game are actually millenia old racists
also cute how openly cute they got with how vague the instructions to some of the missions are, now they say stuff like "it'd be no fun if i told you where it was!" a couple times
the bastok missions introduced in year 2 are a step up writing wise for sure, spending more time with the racism of bastok without doing goofy white saviorisms. it's not incredible but there's a few touching moments and it has more momentum, including in how the missions are designed at large.

the main questline is cool too. of course the zilart could never actually reach their goal for the game to make any sense but there's more of the type of cutscenes i actually enjoyed in the base game (the ones that aren't just capping off the missions), some of the new places are really great, especially starting with the bit where you put the stones in the slots, and there's some cool enemy design, including the crystal bosses who are like evil versions of the 5 player races. of course the pacing is still wonky, especially in that boss rush bit that's got a nonsense amount of walking between fights, and one of those bosses in specific is way harder than the other 4 for no real reason, but it's got actual narrative momentum for a decent amount of stretches. just an all around improvement over the base game content

Strange game tbh, a lot of weird feelings about this one. In terms of story it’s easily some of the best in Final Fantasy’s history, Nojima hit it out of the park and it really does a great job fleshing out Zack as a character, while leaving some breadcrumbs for fans in terms of character interactions and development, covering plot points not seen in Final Fantasy 7, and leaving breadcrumbs for the future as well. This all culminates in an emotionally turbulent conclusion which I got to say absolutely broke me and left me in pieces. Where this game faulters however is in terms of gameplay and design. The combat is very unintuitive and leaves a lot to be desired. Most of it is designed around spamming the attack button with very little variety, you can customize your materia to use different spells and physical attacks but it’s more limited (and not very useful) than it sounds, you’re better off really just using the standard attack most of the time. There’s also a dodge roll and a block button, but they both aren’t very useful, are slow, and have a lot of delay, making them hard to use in difficult situations. You are aided by something called the DMW, which is like a slot machine roulette that grants you a special attack, but the odds of you getting something worthwhile are completely randomized. The enemies and bosses can range in terms of design from okay to BS, with pretty fast attacks with a lot of damage and unskippable overpowered attacks that sometimes result in instant death. The areas themselves are also not very well-designed. Mostly being empty, long-spanning hallways with very few things to find or NPCs. The encounter rate is also really high, which results in you needing to fight and wipe out enemies which can get monotonous. Also added are random minigame sections. These are pretty unintuitive, and are often just a hinderance towards the overall experience as they don’t really add anything of value. All in all while the story and characters are amazing and I cannot stress that enough, the actual game itself is a really mixed bag, I’m not sure how I feel about it. Very mixed feelings as a whole.