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This thread has been linked to the game 'Final Fantasy XIII-2'.
It has been a while since Final Fantasy X-2 came out and became the whipping boy of the series partly due to its cringingly bad story with the organ controlled Vegnagun and having Yuna turn from a respectable role model into a scantily clad gunner, but the game had an interesting “dress sphere” levelling system.
After the release of Final Fantasy XIII it created a split of love and hate and I thought that it was quite brave of Square Enix to decide to release a sequel of it, even though the Final Fantasy name sells itself pretty well. The main complaints of the game came down to the linearity of the game and the characters (whiney Hope, kooky happy Vanille and “the Hero” Snow etc) being annoying.
The thing is that Linearity isn’t a problem and it is a good way for a game designer to have control over game balance and create a focused experience. The problem was that although previous Final Fantasies have been quite linear, they allowed you to travel in an airship throughout a 3D world and usually had non-main story related activities such as Golden Saucer for chocobo racing and arcade games, setting up a band to perform for another character, entering monster slaying tournament/card tournament against allies and Blitzball to have a break from randomly generated combat. In Final Fantasy XIII they didn’t put much effort into trying to give the player breaks from combat apart from one section in a theme park where you look for chocobos in a very confined space, which was pretty weak.
As for the characters, the interaction between party members is what I love most about the series when it is done well. My favourite for this would be Final Fanstasy IX where Zidane and Steiner in conflict over the Princess with ribs of “Rusty” and “Peasant”, Zidane constantly being pervy and thinking about women and even the moogles have some funny dialogue. This is another aspect where I feel Final Fantasy XIII could have been better, as the characters took themselves too seriously throughout the game without much light hearted banter between them to break it up. You may say that the situation that they were in was too bleak to look on the brightside, but those who go to war will make jokes to prevent themselves from feeling tense and FF XIII’s mood was mostly angst and despair.
Now you may be wondering whether these things were improved upon in this sequel, but I can only say that there is evidence that they tried. They managed to make the game less linear by allowing players choice as to where they can go, but as previously stated this wasn’t an issue. It doesn’t matter which gate you travel through, you are going to expect to be fighting at the other end and like its predecessor, it’s what you are going to be spending nearly all your time doing. When the game opened up to Grand Pulse in FFXIII, I still wasn’t happy because although I didn’t have to walk down a corridor, I still had to fight. The combat is given breaks through “Temporal Rifts” where you solve puzzles, which aren’t particularly challenging and Serendipity the casino. I was initially surprised to see the casino, but I was disappointed to find that there was only chocobo racing and a slot machine (others are added with DLC).
The game also has a “Brain-Blast” quiz, which you must go through to collect all the fragments in the game which will allow you to unlock rewards and the other paradox endings. I kind of liked the quizzes but I hated how they would drop in questions like “Odds” or “Evens”, “Left Hand” or “Right Hand” or “ Heads” or “Tails” as if random chance is a sign of intelligence.
As for the mood of the game, you can see a move to light heartedness with the two main characters smiling at ”Mog” the moogle and he does have some rare funny little comments, but it doesn’t happen often enough. There is a section in the game where you have to make an NPC laugh, which was another interesting addition, but there was a weird canned laughter with honking horn noises after each joke, which I found slightly cringing. The game allows you to pick from four dialogue options on occasion when speaking to NPC’s and you can give humorous answers, which is a nice addition. The NPCs generally act like they do in Skyrim where they will say one of their selections of quotes over and over and it feels impersonal but you can initiate conversations as usual.
As for the combat, the game now allows you to collect monsters to add to your paradigms. I found it quite difficult to know which monsters were best to level up and considering I don’t like being inefficient with resources, I ended up consulting a guide. I was surprised when I found that there was no Crystarium (XP) Point cap in this game, which I feel is a blessing and a curse. The CP cap in XIII meant that you couldn’t get so strong that bosses would become a cakewalk. I found quite a few of the main story bosses quite tough in XIII, but I never had to retry a boss fight in XIII-2. This may have been partially because I couldn’t find the gate that my Artefact was meant for and ended up doing side quests and grinding pretty early on.
The story’s use of timelines has allowed the developer to copy and paste environments and change details such as snow or darkness and changes the tasks that the NPCs give out for fragments, which involve collecting items or killing monsters. This isn’t much of an issue to me, but it’s worth mentioning.
I was surprised that after watching the initial trailers that focused on Lightning, you rarely see or play as her throughout the game. The game is focused on Serah and Noel throughout the game, which means that their relationship has to strong enough to evoke laughter and make you care when things go wrong. Just like its predecessor, the only part that did anything for me was the ending where a twist occurs and takes me by surprise, making it feel like the play through was worthwhile and ending on a strong note.
Ultimately, I’m not sure if I can say that this game is an improvement over its predecessor and the thing that I enjoyed most about XIII was the challenging boss fights, which I found far less difficult in XIII-2. That said XIII’s difficulty was mostly down to trial and error as you would have to predict what the enemy would do and sometimes the default paradigms that you were given made it impossible, but I wouldn’t expect any less of an RPG and I enjoyed the surprises and being able to adapt. Which is why I found it disappointing that none of the bosses surprised me and those who have beaten XIII won’t find many new strategies to use here. I didn’t change my play style very much with the addition of the “wound” status ailment, which lowers your maximum health. If you liked XIII then I believe that you would like this as well, but those who didn’t may be happy that the game isn’t as linear, but that isn’t something I’m bothered about.
I like the move towards a more light hearted and humorous style and I hope that the character interactions become more focused with humour in mind in the future. My criticism of difficulty can be considered moot considering I played it on normal difficulty and those who have an itch for a JRPG could do a lot worse.
Good
Light Tone
Silly Dialogue Options
Strong ending twist
Bad
Few Alternatives to combat
Fetch Quests
Annoying chance quiz questions
Repeated Environments
8/10
After the release of Final Fantasy XIII it created a split of love and hate and I thought that it was quite brave of Square Enix to decide to release a sequel of it, even though the Final Fantasy name sells itself pretty well. The main complaints of the game came down to the linearity of the game and the characters (whiney Hope, kooky happy Vanille and “the Hero” Snow etc) being annoying.
The thing is that Linearity isn’t a problem and it is a good way for a game designer to have control over game balance and create a focused experience. The problem was that although previous Final Fantasies have been quite linear, they allowed you to travel in an airship throughout a 3D world and usually had non-main story related activities such as Golden Saucer for chocobo racing and arcade games, setting up a band to perform for another character, entering monster slaying tournament/card tournament against allies and Blitzball to have a break from randomly generated combat. In Final Fantasy XIII they didn’t put much effort into trying to give the player breaks from combat apart from one section in a theme park where you look for chocobos in a very confined space, which was pretty weak.
As for the characters, the interaction between party members is what I love most about the series when it is done well. My favourite for this would be Final Fanstasy IX where Zidane and Steiner in conflict over the Princess with ribs of “Rusty” and “Peasant”, Zidane constantly being pervy and thinking about women and even the moogles have some funny dialogue. This is another aspect where I feel Final Fantasy XIII could have been better, as the characters took themselves too seriously throughout the game without much light hearted banter between them to break it up. You may say that the situation that they were in was too bleak to look on the brightside, but those who go to war will make jokes to prevent themselves from feeling tense and FF XIII’s mood was mostly angst and despair.
Now you may be wondering whether these things were improved upon in this sequel, but I can only say that there is evidence that they tried. They managed to make the game less linear by allowing players choice as to where they can go, but as previously stated this wasn’t an issue. It doesn’t matter which gate you travel through, you are going to expect to be fighting at the other end and like its predecessor, it’s what you are going to be spending nearly all your time doing. When the game opened up to Grand Pulse in FFXIII, I still wasn’t happy because although I didn’t have to walk down a corridor, I still had to fight. The combat is given breaks through “Temporal Rifts” where you solve puzzles, which aren’t particularly challenging and Serendipity the casino. I was initially surprised to see the casino, but I was disappointed to find that there was only chocobo racing and a slot machine (others are added with DLC).
The game also has a “Brain-Blast” quiz, which you must go through to collect all the fragments in the game which will allow you to unlock rewards and the other paradox endings. I kind of liked the quizzes but I hated how they would drop in questions like “Odds” or “Evens”, “Left Hand” or “Right Hand” or “ Heads” or “Tails” as if random chance is a sign of intelligence.
As for the mood of the game, you can see a move to light heartedness with the two main characters smiling at ”Mog” the moogle and he does have some rare funny little comments, but it doesn’t happen often enough. There is a section in the game where you have to make an NPC laugh, which was another interesting addition, but there was a weird canned laughter with honking horn noises after each joke, which I found slightly cringing. The game allows you to pick from four dialogue options on occasion when speaking to NPC’s and you can give humorous answers, which is a nice addition. The NPCs generally act like they do in Skyrim where they will say one of their selections of quotes over and over and it feels impersonal but you can initiate conversations as usual.
As for the combat, the game now allows you to collect monsters to add to your paradigms. I found it quite difficult to know which monsters were best to level up and considering I don’t like being inefficient with resources, I ended up consulting a guide. I was surprised when I found that there was no Crystarium (XP) Point cap in this game, which I feel is a blessing and a curse. The CP cap in XIII meant that you couldn’t get so strong that bosses would become a cakewalk. I found quite a few of the main story bosses quite tough in XIII, but I never had to retry a boss fight in XIII-2. This may have been partially because I couldn’t find the gate that my Artefact was meant for and ended up doing side quests and grinding pretty early on.
The story’s use of timelines has allowed the developer to copy and paste environments and change details such as snow or darkness and changes the tasks that the NPCs give out for fragments, which involve collecting items or killing monsters. This isn’t much of an issue to me, but it’s worth mentioning.
I was surprised that after watching the initial trailers that focused on Lightning, you rarely see or play as her throughout the game. The game is focused on Serah and Noel throughout the game, which means that their relationship has to strong enough to evoke laughter and make you care when things go wrong. Just like its predecessor, the only part that did anything for me was the ending where a twist occurs and takes me by surprise, making it feel like the play through was worthwhile and ending on a strong note.
Ultimately, I’m not sure if I can say that this game is an improvement over its predecessor and the thing that I enjoyed most about XIII was the challenging boss fights, which I found far less difficult in XIII-2. That said XIII’s difficulty was mostly down to trial and error as you would have to predict what the enemy would do and sometimes the default paradigms that you were given made it impossible, but I wouldn’t expect any less of an RPG and I enjoyed the surprises and being able to adapt. Which is why I found it disappointing that none of the bosses surprised me and those who have beaten XIII won’t find many new strategies to use here. I didn’t change my play style very much with the addition of the “wound” status ailment, which lowers your maximum health. If you liked XIII then I believe that you would like this as well, but those who didn’t may be happy that the game isn’t as linear, but that isn’t something I’m bothered about.
I like the move towards a more light hearted and humorous style and I hope that the character interactions become more focused with humour in mind in the future. My criticism of difficulty can be considered moot considering I played it on normal difficulty and those who have an itch for a JRPG could do a lot worse.
Good
Light Tone
Silly Dialogue Options
Strong ending twist
Bad
Few Alternatives to combat
Fetch Quests
Annoying chance quiz questions
Repeated Environments
8/10
Nice read. Not my sort of game, but you certainly made it sound worth getting.
It has been a while since Final Fantasy X-2 came out and became the whipping boy of the series partly due to its cringingly bad story with the organ controlled Vegnagun and having Yuna turn from a respectable role model into a scantily clad gunner, but the game had an interesting “dress sphere” levelling system.
After the release of Final Fantasy XIII it created a split of love and hate and I thought that it was quite brave of Square Enix to decide to release a sequel of it, even though the Final Fantasy name sells itself pretty well. The main complaints of the game came down to the linearity of the game and the characters (whiney Hope, kooky happy Vanille and “the Hero” Snow etc) being annoying.
The thing is that Linearity isn’t a problem and it is a good way for a game designer to have control over game balance and create a focused experience. The problem was that although previous Final Fantasies have been quite linear, they allowed you to travel in an airship throughout a 3D world and usually had non-main story related activities such as Golden Saucer for chocobo racing and arcade games, setting up a band to perform for another character, entering monster slaying tournament/card tournament against allies and Blitzball to have a break from randomly generated combat. In Final Fantasy XIII they didn’t put much effort into trying to give the player breaks from combat apart from one section in a theme park where you look for chocobos in a very confined space, which was pretty weak.
As for the characters, the interaction between party members is what I love most about the series when it is done well. My favourite for this would be Final Fanstasy IX where Zidane and Steiner in conflict over the Princess with ribs of “Rusty” and “Peasant”, Zidane constantly being pervy and thinking about women and even the moogles have some funny dialogue. This is another aspect where I feel Final Fantasy XIII could have been better, as the characters took themselves too seriously throughout the game without much light hearted banter between them to break it up. You may say that the situation that they were in was too bleak to look on the brightside, but those who go to war will make jokes to prevent themselves from feeling tense and FF XIII’s mood was mostly angst and despair.
Now you may be wondering whether these things were improved upon in this sequel, but I can only say that there is evidence that they tried. They managed to make the game less linear by allowing players choice as to where they can go, but as previously stated this wasn’t an issue. It doesn’t matter which gate you travel through, you are going to expect to be fighting at the other end and like its predecessor, it’s what you are going to be spending nearly all your time doing. When the game opened up to Grand Pulse in FFXIII, I still wasn’t happy because although I didn’t have to walk down a corridor, I still had to fight. The combat is given breaks through “Temporal Rifts” where you solve puzzles, which aren’t particularly challenging and Serendipity the casino. I was initially surprised to see the casino, but I was disappointed to find that there was only chocobo racing and a slot machine (others are added with DLC).
The game also has a “Brain-Blast” quiz, which you must go through to collect all the fragments in the game which will allow you to unlock rewards and the other paradox endings. I kind of liked the quizzes but I hated how they would drop in questions like “Odds” or “Evens”, “Left Hand” or “Right Hand” or “ Heads” or “Tails” as if random chance is a sign of intelligence.
As for the mood of the game, you can see a move to light heartedness with the two main characters smiling at ”Mog” the moogle and he does have some rare funny little comments, but it doesn’t happen often enough. There is a section in the game where you have to make an NPC laugh, which was another interesting addition, but there was a weird canned laughter with honking horn noises after each joke, which I found slightly cringing. The game allows you to pick from four dialogue options on occasion when speaking to NPC’s and you can give humorous answers, which is a nice addition. The NPCs generally act like they do in Skyrim where they will say one of their selections of quotes over and over and it feels impersonal but you can initiate conversations as usual.
As for the combat, the game now allows you to collect monsters to add to your paradigms. I found it quite difficult to know which monsters were best to level up and considering I don’t like being inefficient with resources, I ended up consulting a guide. I was surprised when I found that there was no Crystarium (XP) Point cap in this game, which I feel is a blessing and a curse. The CP cap in XIII meant that you couldn’t get so strong that bosses would become a cakewalk. I found quite a few of the main story bosses quite tough in XIII, but I never had to retry a boss fight in XIII-2. This may have been partially because I couldn’t find the gate that my Artefact was meant for and ended up doing side quests and grinding pretty early on.
The story’s use of timelines has allowed the developer to copy and paste environments and change details such as snow or darkness and changes the tasks that the NPCs give out for fragments, which involve collecting items or killing monsters. This isn’t much of an issue to me, but it’s worth mentioning.
I was surprised that after watching the initial trailers that focused on Lightning, you rarely see or play as her throughout the game. The game is focused on Serah and Noel throughout the game, which means that their relationship has to strong enough to evoke laughter and make you care when things go wrong. Just like its predecessor, the only part that did anything for me was the ending where a twist occurs and takes me by surprise, making it feel like the play through was worthwhile and ending on a strong note.
Ultimately, I’m not sure if I can say that this game is an improvement over its predecessor and the thing that I enjoyed most about XIII was the challenging boss fights, which I found far less difficult in XIII-2. That said XIII’s difficulty was mostly down to trial and error as you would have to predict what the enemy would do and sometimes the default paradigms that you were given made it impossible, but I wouldn’t expect any less of an RPG and I enjoyed the surprises and being able to adapt. Which is why I found it disappointing that none of the bosses surprised me and those who have beaten XIII won’t find many new strategies to use here. I didn’t change my play style very much with the addition of the “wound” status ailment, which lowers your maximum health. If you liked XIII then I believe that you would like this as well, but those who didn’t may be happy that the game isn’t as linear, but that isn’t something I’m bothered about.
I like the move towards a more light hearted and humorous style and I hope that the character interactions become more focused with humour in mind in the future. My criticism of difficulty can be considered moot considering I played it on normal difficulty and those who have an itch for a JRPG could do a lot worse.
Good
Light Tone
Silly Dialogue Options
Strong ending twist
Bad
Few Alternatives to combat
Fetch Quests
Annoying chance quiz questions
Repeated Environments
8/10
After the release of Final Fantasy XIII it created a split of love and hate and I thought that it was quite brave of Square Enix to decide to release a sequel of it, even though the Final Fantasy name sells itself pretty well. The main complaints of the game came down to the linearity of the game and the characters (whiney Hope, kooky happy Vanille and “the Hero” Snow etc) being annoying.
The thing is that Linearity isn’t a problem and it is a good way for a game designer to have control over game balance and create a focused experience. The problem was that although previous Final Fantasies have been quite linear, they allowed you to travel in an airship throughout a 3D world and usually had non-main story related activities such as Golden Saucer for chocobo racing and arcade games, setting up a band to perform for another character, entering monster slaying tournament/card tournament against allies and Blitzball to have a break from randomly generated combat. In Final Fantasy XIII they didn’t put much effort into trying to give the player breaks from combat apart from one section in a theme park where you look for chocobos in a very confined space, which was pretty weak.
As for the characters, the interaction between party members is what I love most about the series when it is done well. My favourite for this would be Final Fanstasy IX where Zidane and Steiner in conflict over the Princess with ribs of “Rusty” and “Peasant”, Zidane constantly being pervy and thinking about women and even the moogles have some funny dialogue. This is another aspect where I feel Final Fantasy XIII could have been better, as the characters took themselves too seriously throughout the game without much light hearted banter between them to break it up. You may say that the situation that they were in was too bleak to look on the brightside, but those who go to war will make jokes to prevent themselves from feeling tense and FF XIII’s mood was mostly angst and despair.
Now you may be wondering whether these things were improved upon in this sequel, but I can only say that there is evidence that they tried. They managed to make the game less linear by allowing players choice as to where they can go, but as previously stated this wasn’t an issue. It doesn’t matter which gate you travel through, you are going to expect to be fighting at the other end and like its predecessor, it’s what you are going to be spending nearly all your time doing. When the game opened up to Grand Pulse in FFXIII, I still wasn’t happy because although I didn’t have to walk down a corridor, I still had to fight. The combat is given breaks through “Temporal Rifts” where you solve puzzles, which aren’t particularly challenging and Serendipity the casino. I was initially surprised to see the casino, but I was disappointed to find that there was only chocobo racing and a slot machine (others are added with DLC).
The game also has a “Brain-Blast” quiz, which you must go through to collect all the fragments in the game which will allow you to unlock rewards and the other paradox endings. I kind of liked the quizzes but I hated how they would drop in questions like “Odds” or “Evens”, “Left Hand” or “Right Hand” or “ Heads” or “Tails” as if random chance is a sign of intelligence.
As for the mood of the game, you can see a move to light heartedness with the two main characters smiling at ”Mog” the moogle and he does have some rare funny little comments, but it doesn’t happen often enough. There is a section in the game where you have to make an NPC laugh, which was another interesting addition, but there was a weird canned laughter with honking horn noises after each joke, which I found slightly cringing. The game allows you to pick from four dialogue options on occasion when speaking to NPC’s and you can give humorous answers, which is a nice addition. The NPCs generally act like they do in Skyrim where they will say one of their selections of quotes over and over and it feels impersonal but you can initiate conversations as usual.
As for the combat, the game now allows you to collect monsters to add to your paradigms. I found it quite difficult to know which monsters were best to level up and considering I don’t like being inefficient with resources, I ended up consulting a guide. I was surprised when I found that there was no Crystarium (XP) Point cap in this game, which I feel is a blessing and a curse. The CP cap in XIII meant that you couldn’t get so strong that bosses would become a cakewalk. I found quite a few of the main story bosses quite tough in XIII, but I never had to retry a boss fight in XIII-2. This may have been partially because I couldn’t find the gate that my Artefact was meant for and ended up doing side quests and grinding pretty early on.
The story’s use of timelines has allowed the developer to copy and paste environments and change details such as snow or darkness and changes the tasks that the NPCs give out for fragments, which involve collecting items or killing monsters. This isn’t much of an issue to me, but it’s worth mentioning.
I was surprised that after watching the initial trailers that focused on Lightning, you rarely see or play as her throughout the game. The game is focused on Serah and Noel throughout the game, which means that their relationship has to strong enough to evoke laughter and make you care when things go wrong. Just like its predecessor, the only part that did anything for me was the ending where a twist occurs and takes me by surprise, making it feel like the play through was worthwhile and ending on a strong note.
Ultimately, I’m not sure if I can say that this game is an improvement over its predecessor and the thing that I enjoyed most about XIII was the challenging boss fights, which I found far less difficult in XIII-2. That said XIII’s difficulty was mostly down to trial and error as you would have to predict what the enemy would do and sometimes the default paradigms that you were given made it impossible, but I wouldn’t expect any less of an RPG and I enjoyed the surprises and being able to adapt. Which is why I found it disappointing that none of the bosses surprised me and those who have beaten XIII won’t find many new strategies to use here. I didn’t change my play style very much with the addition of the “wound” status ailment, which lowers your maximum health. If you liked XIII then I believe that you would like this as well, but those who didn’t may be happy that the game isn’t as linear, but that isn’t something I’m bothered about.
I like the move towards a more light hearted and humorous style and I hope that the character interactions become more focused with humour in mind in the future. My criticism of difficulty can be considered moot considering I played it on normal difficulty and those who have an itch for a JRPG could do a lot worse.
Good
Light Tone
Silly Dialogue Options
Strong ending twist
Bad
Few Alternatives to combat
Fetch Quests
Annoying chance quiz questions
Repeated Environments
8/10