Alright, so going in I'm pretty sure everyone knows I hated Final Fantasy XIII. I mean I disliked everything about the game except the music, which was beautifully composed. So why did I preorder FFXIII-2 and pick it up midnight? Because....I don't know so let's lie and say I'm an optimist.



OK so I won't really be giving a full detailed analysis as I haven't completed the game (blame school) but I will give you a what to expect and the new features. FFXIII-2 continues off...in a sense from the end of 13 but somehow reality has changed; Lightning didn't really smile because when she did she broke the time universe (insert laughs) and altered reality to where she actually "died" with Vanille and Fang inside the crystal. Only problem is that didn't happen and nobody believes Serah who apparently is the only who remembers the events of XIII.

Now, in the beginning you watch a huge fight scene between Lightning and Caius (the new antagonist) and while the visuals are supreme and comparable to FFXIII, but that isn't why we buy games. So even after more cinematics you control Lightning on Oden and basically how to fight again or choose the option of using a tutorial (optional). It's pretty boring in the beginning I mean you only control one character and really should just listen to autobattle. After your land battle, you face off aganist Caius which you fight and then you actually start one of the new features called Live Trigger/Action.

If anyone thinks this a new Square-Enix feature you are unfortunately a noob err mistaken. The idea I last remember it being used in a RPG was in Kingdom Hearts 2, with it's button action sequences during the end of boss fights or combos. Now one difference with KH2's and FFXIII-2 is in KH2 you could at least watch the cinematic and understand what Sora was doing; in FFXIII-2 you really don't get to see what is happening as you basically are looking anywhere on the screen where the next button will come up. I like it though because you rewarded for perfect actions; I am just disappointed I don't get to see the "cool" moves or what focus on what is happening on screen.




Well FINALLY WE START FFXIII-2 after Noel meets Lightning and some unanswered questions are left (typical for RPG formula) we start our adventure in New Bodhum. This is the end of my story telling days but obviously Noel meets Serah after monsters attack the town.

So once you gain control of Serah you finally get to feel the concept of the changes made you can JUMP (trust me being able to jump in today's open world games feels amazing). You can talk to real NPC's as they are not background visuals and the best part is not every NPC is relevant. See usually in Final Fantasy you must talk to every NPC and about 80% give off useless information about their non-existent so you must salvage your way through every character to find sidequests or even where to go. Well not in FFXIII-2, first off the irrelevant NPCs are left to background/walk past them noise so you know they don't mean much. Second, characters that can talk or have side-quests have icons above them (usually the ...) so you can go through a mini-scene and talk to t hem. And lastly, there is a huge yellow ! spot on where to go; so you don't waste all day.

Another feature added...well built on the talking/conversation is the idea of choosing...what to say. I don't remember the exact name of this feature it may be categorized under live action as well. So basically when talking the game freezes from the last sentence and you get to choose what line you want to say next; which actually makes you feel like you are conversing with the others, thus keeping you involved in the game (the lines vary from funny to right so it makes choosing oh so hard).



Open-world is similar to FFXIII except you can now find hidden items with Mog (the Moogle) which are pretty easy to find as they reflect. In addition Chocobo's are obviously back, but I feel they were downgraded. See you cannot search for hidden items with Mog while on a Chocobo in addition, you cannot dig for items (well so far for myself, if anyone else knows you can please tell me).

Ok well the music is as good or maybe even better than FFXIII, I can't make the full judgement on that either because it takes me a LONG time to judge video game music. Just know you will enjoy all the scenery, in addition to the music being played. Voice acting is great especially when you hear voices from Bleach (like Rangiku) or even Teen Titan's Robin so no worries there, along with the graphics (which I already stated).



Last but not least the battle-system gameplay. The battle system is pretty much the same from FFXIII except they got rid of the change paradigms during commands to execute more commands while having the ATB charged, so it did increase the difficulty a little bit. In addition you don't have a real third party member as you collect monsters (not like Pokemon) to be on your team and unfortuantely you have to level them up, otherwise they are just like any other character; so really there is no change to the typical RPG battling. The real change came at the "leveling up" area a.k.a the crystallarium. Before in 13, the crystallarium was a limited/restricted boring chart in which you could only level up per chapter and chose which type (Commando, Ravager, etc.) you wanted to increase. In this game the crystaillarium is more free, but has no clarity. Both Serah and Noel start of with Commando, Ravager, Sentinel, you can level-up/unlock the other abilities while moving you don't really get to see what is ahead or when you level up; you just level up the Types so your Ravager can be level 25 while Commando level 30 it depends on how you want to build and what teams you generate!



Overall this game has WAY PAST SUCCEEDED MY EXPECTATIONS (as I had none for it but it really is done well; this is what XIII should have been). In my advice, go pick up this game as soon as you can, it's great in so many ways and won't be a waste of your money/a quick game.

If you want a score I'd say 8.8-9.