Final Fantasy 13-2

[P_Skelly]

If you did not like FF13 please just walk away. We know why you didn't like FF13 and I am ok with the fact that you do not like FF13.

I however, did like FF13 and I like FF13-2 so far. There are many things I didn't like in FF13 but this thread isn't about that. This is mostly a comparison between the two.

Story: The story of 13-2 is not better than 13 and may actually be worse. They do not handle time travel very well in my opinion. Especially compared to how awesome the story in Chrono Trigger was. I think the way the story is told is way too jumbled and pseudo mysterious to be interesting and fun.

Characters: I didn't like Serah in 13 and I don't like her in 13-2 either! Noel is not a bad character he isn't super whinny like Serah and Hope and not super obnoxious like Snow. I am moderately interested in watching how to story unfolds around him.

World: I like the world just as much as in 13. Although not explained well unless you read all the text history in 13; I thought the idea of Cocoon and Gran Pulse and the machine god people was a great concept. In 13-2 it is still interesting because you are going between the two often and now going back and forth through time as well.

Game play and Mechanics: First off, there are towns and npc's! I am glad there are towns if only for the break from battles. The NPC's are moderately interesting to listen to but mostly I like that some give you side missions which is awesome. Instead of a random crystal station shop thingy they now have a weird time traveling shop keeper. I like that its a "person" but I dislike that she is everywhere! You can really tell they just pulled out the crystal shop and plopped her in its place.
The battle system is still the highlight of this game in my opinion. I really enjoy the fast pace job class switching (or paradigm if you will). They made this much quicker to do and much more necessary. In 13 I only felt challenged by some of the bosses and the later side quest fights. In 13-2 until I did some grinding, some of the regular fights were challenging. I don't know if I like or dislike collecting monsters for the purpose of having them in my party especially since they only have one class and you can only chose three to switch through in a battle. Its not the end of the world but it definitely irritates me some times.
They added QTEs which I am not a big fan of in general but they do them moderately well in this game and give you rewards for doing them just right.

I am sure there is stuff I am missing but this is getting to be a long post. I do like the game even though it is no were near one of my favorites. It is a big improvement over 13 but if you didn't like 13 you wont like this. I hope this game sells well so Square can stay in business and do some sweet remakes of FF5 and especially FF6, like they did with FF3 and 4.

Feel free to post your thoughts, opinions, questions, etc.

[GNDM-Exia]

I agree, FFXIII was way better than FFXIII-2. There were many additions that were cool such as catching monsters and a time traveling plot. Of course they also took away some things that I think they should have kept. But still I think I enjoyed playing this sequel.

Here's my opinion of the game:

[SPOILERS- That's my only warning!]

Story: Plot-wise, there were many things that I had a hard time believing. I've always had trouble with Time Travel related plots. While the concept of Time Travel itself sounds cool, it leads to many plot holes. The main thing that Time Travel causes is a 'chicken or the egg' problem. Time travel cause circular problems in which I have a hard time believing with how these characters get out of these problems. The paradoxes that had to be solved are the epitome of this problem. One spoiler question: If all Caius had to do was destroy his own heart [more specifically Etro's heart that she gave him], then why didn't he just kill himself from the beginning, instead of trying to provoke Noel into killing him. He ended up doing this anyways at the end...

Characters: There are really only two main characters, Noel and Serah. I honestly think that they weren't that good. They were bland. Lighting, who is my favorite, only appears a few times. We only ever get to use her once and that was all. And in the end she is crystallized for some reason. Snow appears a NPC and that's all. We never get to save Fang and Vanille from their crystal state. Hope is a genius inventor who is able to build a whole new Cocoon. Sazh just comes back to fly an airship - that's all. Caius is a cool antagonist - in which he is able to win against the supposed heroes we play as. Yeul was just there only to provide a reason for what Caius is doing.

Gameplay: There were many changes that I thought were really good. These include the fragment skills. The feral link was cool and fun except for the part when I had bad luck with 'catching' the monsters. The monsters had limited abilities. I wish some monsters were able to have more abilities. There were significantly less abilities which I wish they had kept. There was the annoying equipment capacity limits. Of course these 'limits' are done to prevent players from being too overpowered. I think that this sequel had less variety with the items - since I only ever bothered to use only a few items. As for the fighting aspects, I think the fighting was faster and kinda too easy. Sure there were some tough ones but I just simply had to grind for CP and eventually I would beat them. I'm just saying that fighting these enemies didn't really require much strategy. I can think of only two enemies that required a decent amount of effort and that was against Yomi and Raspatil.

The only really good thing that I have to say is that the gameplay was better than before. Sadly that's all I can say about the sequel. Story-wise, I think I borderline hated it. This sequel didn't really provide any kind of continuation or closure. It just introduced more problems that needed to be fixed. And the ending - well the fact that the ending that we have now proves that I think this sequel was rushed. Or this ending is a marketing ploy to get people to buy the DLCs which probably won't be for a while.

Overall, I think this game was good but not as great as FFXIII.

[Muster Krux]

First of all, there's a spoilers tag [spoiler=Check out my mad spoiler skills!]Use it, it's not hard[/spoiler]

Second, you can put a hat onto a cat. I'm sold, and I haven't worked up the enthusiasm to play more than 15 hours of FF-13 yet.

[Tomoki]

The Immersion in F13 was laughable, cared little to nothing about the world, and the interesting Characters; Lightning, Sazh, Vanille, Fang really couldn't be fleshed out due to the limitations of the gameplay. A present better left wrapped.

It was beyond dissapointing, and thats just the story.

The gameplay wasn't bad, I actually didn't have much of an issue with the battle system, it was more or less just boring. 13 didn't give you any reason to play it, besides curiosity about the plot, the world was stale, leveling up was arduous and overall the experience felt more like a chore than fun activity.

Now I hear they've flipped, killing the story (more than it already was) and slightly improving the gameplay?

1. The story was already messed, HOW messed could you possibly make it?

2. How are your main characters going to be less riveting/interesting than NPC'S?!?!

3. Taming? lame, I hated that functionality in Tales of Symphonia 2 and still do. Give me characters plz.

I certainly won't spend a dime on this game with Tales of Graces F only around the corner. This will be a summer fill at best, I'll problaly purchase when then price drops...just my two cents.

[Mitsugi]

Amen Skizzle. FF13-2 was amazing. I got the platinum trophy and i loved it!

[Tomoki]

Alright I recently finished 13-2...and really, the story was a god awful joke...

Two questions:

How the f*** does anything that happened in this game warrant it being labeled FFXIII-2? The explanation wasn't even close to believable, and pretty much all of the concepts and rationale of XIII were effectively thrown out of the window.

If I hear someone say Yeul again I swear to god I'm going to beat them with with a shovel. Caius was such a typical emo character. Certainly not worth main antagonist status.

Oh and XIII-3 was announced, Lightning returns...shit looks like it has nothing to do with the established plot of the series...why can't versus just be released?

[Mitsugi]

Alright I recently finished 13-2...and really, the story was a god awful joke...

Two questions:

How the f*** does anything that happened in this game warrant it being labeled FFXIII-2? The explanation wasn't even close to believable, and pretty much all of the concepts and rationale of XIII were effectively thrown out of the window.

If I hear someone say Yeul again I swear to god I'm going to beat them with with a shovel. Caius was such a typical emo character. Certainly not worth main antagonist status.

Oh and XIII-3 was announced, Lightning returns...shit looks like it has nothing to do with the established plot of the series...why can't versus just be released?

All of your points are 100% valid. I had a good laugh with the end of the game. For one thing, how does a desolate world come up with the industry to build this giant floating cocoon? Who supplied the money? Who supplied the man power or the heavy industry? Who KNOWS!?! Second, why is the solution to the collapse of cocoon, A SECOND COCOON?! I found Pulse was a rather nice place to live. I think that they should have instead built a nice civilization there.

The games plotline did have massive problems but the game did many things well that made it a big improvement over FF13. For one thing, the environments were a big upgrade and also the questing and more free roaming system made it an improvement.

Is the game better than FF6, FF7, FF8, FF9, FF10, OR even FF10-2? No. But i enjoyed it more than 12 or 13.