Forum in Aggro

Yes, I'm from South Australia :p


Small world, apparently.

Yeah it is.

If you need a recap of 13, . (Spoilers.)

Why am I even reading this thread??? I need to play XIII first. Good thing there's no major spoilers typed up here. Hopefully, I'll get a PS3 to play it as a graduation gift this summer. :3

So, 30 hours later, I "finished" Final Fantasy XIII-2.

So here are some brief thoughts!

Firstly, as Roll noted earlier in the thread, I didn't care for the story. Rather, it'd be more accurate to say I was incapable of caring about the story. It was all so nonsensical, I couldn't really ever tell what was really going on, and it just never engaged me. That said, I strongly disliked XIII for the same reasons. Weak story, and characters.

I say that as someone who generally loves story in games. Most of my favorite games have amazing characters and stories that I love, and still regard fondly. So don't think I'm against that in anyway. I just don't think it's particularly good in XIII-2.

That said, the game was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed it. I thought the battle system from XIII was the best part of that game, and it was nice to see them refine it even further with this game. I think the tweaks they made, like making the Paradigm Shifts less of a hassle, and simplifying the Crystarium really worked nicely here. And the addition of monsters, which is usually something I shy away from, turned out to be genius. I love the role they serve in your party, and swapping between the different monsters on the fly was awesome.

I actually found a few monsters in the game that were really awesome, and I started building my strategies around them. For instance, there's a Flan type enemy later on who is a Medic. His Feral Link ability is like an "OH SHIT!" button, because it instantly restores the whole party to near full health. And for my tank, I never took that damn Robot from the beginning of the game out of my party.

With that said, it should also be noted that the game is... easy. Which is good, and bad. Good because I like an easy experience, I like to just be able to enjoy a game. One of my biggest problems with XIII was the need for massive grinding just to get by. Not just for "levels" but for the ridiculous crafting system. At a point it just gets to be a pain. In XIII-2 you can just enjoy the game. The bad side of this is that most of the battles in the game are just mindless. Thus, you don't really get to experience how engaging the battle system is. Fortunately there are a few points in the game where you can, and it feels great. Particularly the final boss which was incredibly hectic, and just a pure adrenaline rush.

I still have a bunch of side stuff to do, Paradox endings and what not. I'm sure I'll dabble with it, but I'm in no hurry to overstay my welcome with XIII-2. Actually, for whatever reason, I feel strongly compelled to go back and replay Final Fantasy XII.

Welp, that's all I got.

Possible spoilers!

I think what you have to remember about 13-2 is that it is pure canon. i mean straight off the bat its completely different to how 13 ended. its a parallel universe of chaos and discord i feel is there to balance the original harmonious (sort of) world. what i enjoyed most about the game is spotting the little inconsistancies and trying to work out what should have actually happen. for example, and im fairly sure this is in the demo, Alyssa wants you to find the graveyard so she can find a tombstone to read. i think we can all guess what actually happened there. i enjoy entertaining the idea of time travel, and i feel squenix did a very good job of it. i also love the ending, which im obv not going to write out but if you have done it, was your mouth as wide as mine was? =O i got the platinum for this game, and to do that you need to see all of the paradox endings, one of which is a short clip after the original ending and i loved it. i'd advise everyone to do the same!