Final Fantasy XIII had its fans. I was among them, and I've taken a fair amount of stick for that. But even I, in my Pulse-induced state of delirium, would admit that it had issues. Taken as a riposte to those complaints, XIII-2 is something of a petulant over-reaction. Taken as a sequel, it's a pleasant echo that's lost a little nuance. Taken as a game in its own right - something that's almost impossible for a Final Fantasy game - XIII-2 is pretty damn good.
In terms of story, it's great - you'll find out by what deus ex machina the cast of the first game escaped their certain fate. You'll be satisfied by the dire and slightly incomprehensible consequences of that intervention. You'll nod your head and smile through the babble, because Final Fantasy XIII-2, like so many of these things, boils down to a complicated and unbalanced love story between people with far too much power.
The cast problem has been totally fixed, thanks to the fact there's just two main characters. Serah runs ridiculously, using the same animation as the skin-crawling Vanille. But she's no gasping woman-parody. She's reasonable, talkative, and likeable.
Noel, our companion from the future, is neither moody nor hyperactive. He's a guy with issues, but he's not a miserable bummed-out douche about it. Of course, there's an irritant. Your fully-voiced Moogal companion (Kupo) does his best to ruin the atmosphere (Kupo) by saying Kupo all the time (Kupokupo), but even that doesn't kill this new, amiable atmosphere. You even learn pretty quickly how to throw him off a cliff. He comes back, but it's therapeutic.
The most common criticism was that the first 15 hours of FFXIII were a long, long corridor. The surprising reaction to that is the Historia Crux. The Historia Crux is your new corridor, a menu screen with discrete locations across time and space spread among its branches. There's no physical connection between the maps. You unlock new locations by delivering artifacts to gates, opening new locations on the Crux.
The corridor of the first game was a long, long tutorial - pairing the six characters off in every possible combination to make you learn the interactions of each of the six combat roles. A certain familiarity is assumed, here, so that corridor wasn't necessary. However, this new solution gets rid of the world. There's no arrival at Gran Pulse. No moment when you're given an airship. It may be functionally the same as having a world, but there's no sense of expedition. It's a decision that is going to ruffle a lot of phoenix feathers.
20 comments so far...
terry cheyne on 29 Jan '12 said:
i played the demo and found it boring to be honest but it was only demo
if you didn't like the demo is it worth buying now or waiting till it's 20 quid
danb95 on 29 Jan '12 said:
I would imagine waiting till its cheaper.It you didn't like the demo though I doubt you would like the full game.Depends if you like rpg or not.
Alaric14 on 29 Jan '12 said:
I've come to the conclusion that Final Fantasy games are no longer RPGs, they are just visual pornography.
comabob on 29 Jan '12 said:
So final fantasy contains "explicit display of sexual organs or activity"?
Surely you mean plain old "eye candy"?
STE MO on 30 Jan '12 said:
Isn't pornography visual anyway?
Log which is better this or it's predecessor?
CunningSmile on 30 Jan '12 said:
The guys at Bioware argued a few years back that JRPGs aren't, and never have been, RPGs. I agree. The main thrust of their arguement was that if you pick up a western RPG by Bioware or Bethesda you get to create a character from scratch, make it look how you like and you have a say in how the game turns out. You can even go back and play it a second time and a lot of the time get a completely different experience. A JRPG always has you playing a spiky haired teenage boy, you always follow the same plot in the same way and really are no more Role Playing than you are with something like CoD, the most creative you get is choosing powers to upgrade, which isn't that different from choosing a loadout.
They do look pretty though.
Alaric14 on 30 Jan '12 said:
Cunning, your correct interpretation of my comment is giving me a serious man-induced boner.
Final Fantasy games have become the perfect example of how you can make a piece of glass look like a proper diamond if you polish it well enough. I bought FFXIII, FFXII, FFVIII, FFVII, and FFX, and only FFX was passable thanks to its (vaguely) coherent story. NO MORE. I've been fooled by the lovely graphics and superb cutscenes far too often to believe this game will be any different.
But seriously, the people at Square Enix really know how to make a fantastic cutscene. Perhaps they should do animated films instead, although they'd be better off finding their writers and voice actors somewhere else...Would BioWare lend a sympathetic hand? Possibly.
Metalratex on 30 Jan '12 said:
Walking oranges and giant chickens. Not my kind of game.
CunningSmile on 31 Jan '12 said:
Glad I could fulfill your boner needs
Alaric14 on 31 Jan '12 said:
Boners are only ever earned, not needed!
OXM Log on 2 Feb '12 said:
I agree with OXM's original review of XIII that gave it a 9, so to my mind this isn't quite as good. XIII also gives you more signposts about what to do next - since writing this review, I'm still shy of a ton of fragments, and genuinely at a loss as to what I can do next.
I'll tell you what, these empty map nodes had better not be planned DLC
michaelhill2110 on 16 Feb '12 said:
they did make 2 films, one a spin of of ff7 and another fainal fantisy... nither did very well.... the ff7 advent children can be forgiven as it was purley for ff7 fans, my wife tried to watch it with me an just got confused caus she didnt know the preavious story. the other film failed so badly sony scrapt the department that made it and "sony films" died befour it was even born.
back to the main topic, my wife brought me this game for valentines day (i have the best wife in the world!!!) and i realy havn't got into it. monsters fighting on you side is cool but its soooooo far away from the origonal story. at least when they did 10-2 the story was conected... i mean where in 13 was there ever isues with the time space continuem??
SidTheSloth on 16 Feb '12 said:
Oh Square what has gone wrong
My desire for this has all but turned to dust...
Everything i read puts me off more and more...
It feels almost like the end of an era...
J-RPGs live on, but what was once the benchmark is slowly drowning under expectation and it's painful to see
I think they really need to figure out what it is that both they and the fans want. I would like them to wave infinite sums of money at Hironobu and get him back at the helm, or give/share dev responsibility to Mistwalker...
michaelhill2110 on 16 Feb '12 said:
i think there turning from 'games to buy' to 'games to buy cheep or get given'. as i said i was given 13-2 as a preasant and am chuffed to bits with it... but i sure as hell wouldnt spend my own money for it... at least not at full price anyway. i feel the same way about many other j-rpgs these days...
SidTheSloth on 16 Feb '12 said:
Yup, unfortunately so, at least regarding FF. It and GTA were the two series i worshipped but it feels like both have diminished!
Got a Wii? The Last Story launches next week (by Mistwalker studios/Horonobu Sakaguchi - or Mr Final Fantasy as he should also be called!) and looks pretty awesome! No wonder Nintendo raced to sign him up after MS let them go... I've got a wii and will probably get it but i hate playing on it compared to 360/ps3
michaelhill2110 on 8 Mar '12 said:
just compleeted the game........ WHAT THE FLYING FISH!!!!!
SidTheSloth on 4 Apr '12 said:
Ok, so i've picked this up cheap far sooner than i thought i'd be able to. Despite the intro being vague beyond my wildest i'm prepared to run with it, regardless of the moogles stupid benevolent face...
One thing/question though - do the 'suddenly appearing beasties' i have to whack with the sword before that gauge runs out littered throughout the game?
It is in essence nothing more than random battles made to look pretty. I know in XIII you had to fight a lot of the time when you didn't want to, but you could see the enemies and often avoid encounters entirely, especially when it was against the same enemy oooover and over again if investigating something. I'm only on the opening sequence where Serah meets Noel but im irked already that i can't investigate properly without something spawning right next to me - i can't even outrun/get away from it or im locked into a 'non-retry' battle?! The new gauge-mechanic thing is making me think it's here to stay and is the horrible-ist of backwards steps if so - please tell me it isn't?
SidTheSloth on 4 Apr '12 said:
Never mind, run until the circle turns blue, i got it, was trying in too small an area at first... Still prefer the old method but it's hardly world ending, especially as i'm only 40 minutes in so it's got plenty of time to get better.
Still seems we've traded Vanille for a Moogle & Serah between which i'm struggling to decide the worst. I suppose the first had Hope too though so they win in sheer annoyance factor, although i recall reading i'll encounter the little shit in xiii2 at some point. Hopefully i'll see crystal vanille at some point and lay down a dirty protest - see if it melts/shatters the crystal, y'know, not for payback but for old times sake?
michaelhill2110 on 4 Apr '12 said:
Hope's back but noware near as anoying, you can alwase throw moogle off a cliff which is satisfying, and Vanille only shows up once and not for long:) and i dare say you will agree with my preavious statement when you compleet it. howerver i havent found all the fragments yet so havnt seen the alternate ending yet.
SidTheSloth on 4 Apr '12 said:
Steady there dude, easy on the spoiler-esque information...!
Even though the first had it's flaws (and Vanille), it was good fun if not ball achingly linear in places. Aside from a few unnecessary cut scenes (mounting/dismounting chocobos being a good example), unnecessary back-tracking for c'ieth stone missions and the inability to save paradigms, it was on the whole very well constructed with few flaws save for what the game was missing by traditional FF standards.
Why then, they've decided to fix what wasn't broken is beyond me. I could go off on a real wishface type rant here, i've already mentioned the annoying change to the enemies appearing, but the other two serious irks i now have are:
The save system - unless i'm being monumentally stupid, you only have 1 slot and cannot save to a different one? The game autosaves at various points and this writes over your manual save whether you want it to or not? Why on earth did they change this? Basically if i balls up there's no way back - which brings me on nicely to the next point...
The new crystarium. This was one of the big positives for me in XIII, i liked the way you levelled up through it, focusing on the bits you most wanted etc. They've taken it a step further this time and for the large part it works, making one crystarium cover all of the roles instead of one for each. It's a bit unclear near the start as you have little idea which path each character will be best suited too. Obviously Serah - Ravager, Noel - Commando, but beyond that it's not clear so putting points into any of the areas feels at best haphazard. I don't want this to be easy though so fair enough, i'll stick with it. What's unforgivable though is the complete lack in any way of an 'undo' button. I don't mind the choices being locked in once you choose to leave the screen, but the controls, which with little pop up menus requiring confirmation all the time are haphazard at best result in the occasional misallocation with the net result of 'quit/reload' to start the upgrade tree again. Can't believe something so simple has annoyed me so much. The fact that the reload doesn't load to where you were but into the 'hub/crux' world too doesn't help with this.
All are little things but added together they're really hurting what would otherwise be quite a novel branch-off from the original. Not sure i like the monster ally thing, but it's nice and novel so i'll run with it, but i can't see it'll ever take the place of having a proper team mate. I can't even be arsed upgrading the monsters i've found as every ten minutes i seem to find a better one as an example.
Hmm. Not a good start, this coming from one of FF's biggest fans too