Customer Reviews

Final Fantasy XIII-2

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The best part about this game in my opinion is the overall vas exploration and hidden secrets all over. I have always been the type to work hard to find all a game has to offer and FFXIII-2 has tons. Monster collection, which I originally thought was a terrible addition to fill in the spot of a third character, is so much fun and very addicting. Almost every monster you fight, you have a chance of collecting them in a crystal, having them join your party. Each one has a specific role and their own unique feral attacks. Overall, it's a fantastic addition to the game.

When you feel like taking a break from searching for Lightning, there is an amusement park style casino where you can play slots and raise chocobo's for the races to earn some nice prizes and gil. There are a few areas here that are not open yet. If you talk to an employee NPC, you will hear that these areas are under construction and will be available at a later date. Hinting that new games will be available through DLC, including a new card game next to the slots. Square Enix already has me itching for the DLC.

The graphics and gameplay mechanics are almost the same, just improved and move at a much faster rate than XIII. Although, the story does take a little while to get interesting and can be very confusing at times. Nothing is forced and you have the freedom to explore and grind to lvl 99 from the very beginning without even touching the main story line. (Although I would pace yourself on leveling too fast, because the fights will get super easy) No limitations or caps are put on you. The main story line may take about 25 hours to complete, but the amount of content meant to be explored will have you playing for at least 50-60 hours easily. Not to mention the DLC they plan on releasing later on. They really listened to the fanbase and have given us a product that is both fun and entertaining. If you want a game that will have you hooked from the very beginning, pick this one up.

P.S.
I came across a Tonberry King today...got my butt kicked in like 30 seconds. He is a beast.

I've been waiting for FFXIII-2 for a while and I have to say this game is an improvement to all of the weak aspects of Final Fantasy XIII. I have played this game nonstop since it came out and I was able to rush through the main storyline in 20 hours. Keep in mind that I have beaten this game (got through the final cutscene)but not with 100% completion.

The first DEFINITE improvement is that you are no longer bound by a linear storyline / corridors to travel through. This is a much welomed improvement for sure, the option for the player to proceed at their own pace by selecting to skip around history is very nice.

The second improvement is that the upgrading system seems to be easier to use, you are able to level your character as you please and you are able to level whatever role you want.

Now to the bad parts (not a lot and these are just opinions)

The first is that your third party member is limited to the monsters you encounter and capture. And you feel a bit empty inside after spending time leveling a monster only to have it replaced by a lower level, but stronger creature that you just captured.

For the people that were wondering about the Amazon DLC Omega, it does NOT make you overpowered or allow you to breeze through the game. I have beaten the game with at least 3 roles of each character maxed to level 99 and still omega kicks my ass (he doesn't join you until you beat him).

********************* POSSIBLE SPOILER INCOMING???!? ******************************

The MAIN problem I have with FFXIII is that this is the only Final Fantasy game that I've played that literally said "to be continued" after you beat the final boss. It leaves me feeling so unsatisfied that the game ended like that. Well to be fair I don't know if there is an alternate ending for finishing the game with 100%. But after looking around on youtube, the secret ending doesn't really add much to the ending in FFXIII-2. I'm not going to go into details of how it ended but it feels cut short.

**************************************** END SPOLIER SECTION **************************

Overall this is a very good game, it is a must buy if you enjoyed FFXIII and it feels like a much more polished game and what FFXIII should have been. Still a very good game, I might update this review when I finish more of the game.

UPDATE: Ok, well now I finished the game 158/160 fragments and have done basically everything the game has to offer and now my total playtime is 50 hours. So bascially if you are going to spend your time with only the story mode and ignore all of the side quest content, this game can probably be rented and beaten in a week. However if you are a completionist and like to do all of the stuff that the game has to offer, just keep in mind that this game does not offer nearly as much play time as other final fantasy titles.

I personally liked FFXIII and so far i love FFXIII-2!!! for those that werent pleased with 13 because of linearity but still liked the story and battle system, you will love this game! it's a great addition to the ff universe!! i'm pretty much at the end of the main story line but theres still alot to do., you can really get alot of hours out of this game in different ways. one of my favorite things is you get to capture monsters, it's pretty cool and can be quite a challenge to get the rare ones, since it's all random when they show up and if you can capture them.

Anybody disappointed with XIII (like me) will find just about everything fixed with this title. The music is FAR BETTER and more memorable, the characters are more likeable, the game is no longer one large hallway and has more open environments and areas with twists branches and hidden paths. It almost doesn't even feel like it belongs in the XIII franchise if it weren't for the characters. All in all if you like Final Fantasy and aren't just a hop on the bandwagon hate train that everyone seems to be trying to do since this games release (or for many since its announcement) you will like the game. Although the story may be less coherent it still flows better than XIII did and for the people who complain about it get over yourself, this game is FANTASY and does not have to adhere to whatever your rules are in your own little head.

Better than the first. The storyline actually took some thought to figure out would could possible happen next. Unlike FF13, I actually found myself interested in the cutscenes. The climactic final battle was fun and frankly, EPIC.

I was a little taken back by the fact that there are actually only two playable characters but the ability to capture virtually any enemy in the game and use them in your offensive stragety gave the feel of having an endless army of characters at my disposal. Twilight Odin is the stuff.

The addition of areas similar to golden saucer from FF7 and an expansive city was a bonus as well.

Typical Square Enix Final Fantasy graphics. AWESOME

Unlike FF13 the platninum trophy is attainable under 100 hours of PT.

Overall, much better than it's counterpart.

The strangest thing happened as I entered a new episode... I was excited to clear my way through the city under horrible circumstances. Enthusiasm in dungeon adventuring in a Final Fantasy game? How long has it been? Not just interested, or knowing it should be fun, but honest anticipation and a craving to jump into what looks like a mostly hopeless situation without entirely thinking through my options ahead of time and not knowing what the eventual outcome would look like.

It's been ages.

Honest-to-goodness plot twists, turns and surprises (for better and worse). A vague concept of where you 'should' go next to continue to primary storyline but never any rush or ever forced to go anywhere. All the time in the world ... er. For time travel. Sorry. No pun intended. Usually I can't stand the idea of time travel in games, since it's most always represented poorly. It's rare for total causality to actually play through, so how to fix? Up to three variations of any time jump-- a "before", an "after" and often a totally alternate timeline created by certain actions you've taken in the past. What you do in the past changes the future, and what you do in the future changes how things are done in the past in its own way.

Sure, at the end of the day it's still a stereotypical RPG gimmick, but the timeline traveled in XIII-2 branches off in more directions than I can offhandedly recall seeing before.

A lot of the good has been held over and this can be considered a 100% sequel after the events of the original XIII. The already slick battle system and schemes are here and even a little improved. The exp system is made more simple yet offers customization. Every Final Fantasy trademark noun, verb and adjective are all here... So what's managed to make things go wrong? The quite interesting cast of characters of the original have disappeared, and not unreasonably considering how the original ended. The premise, as such, has scraps to work with from the start and it shows. A previously secondary character as the lead, a totally new face inserted as a lone travel companion, a lovable Moogle as a conversing party member, and things are so lonesome that your third battle spot is held by any variety of monsters you capture.

Before even opening the game packaging, the player gets a still kick in the teeth with the absurd tease that the inspiring Lightning is back. She is, but not as an active character. The game is, if you want to simplify, a fancy detective case to solve Lightning's kidnapping.

Part of a not-a-5-star review is a scolding to Square-Enix for toying with consumers. It's terribly evident that XIII was a somewhat unfinished product and heaps of criticism were easy to pile on. Most of those issues are fixed... it's pandering. Pandering isn't bad, but it is a sign of weakness to games on both ends of a 'before and after' development cycle. I really hope some more use can be found for this game engine after I realized its scope. The game contains absolutely massive cities, and, upon throwing my Moogle for treasure hunting purposes (rather fun!), in a free-falling area one can watch him/her(?) bouncing off the walls and plunging endlessly downward for a good 10-15 seconds. Not just that the space is created as part of the environment, but that even the land and background features are functional outside the field of play and in the entire "zone" is very impressive. Hurl your Moogle off some skyscrapers and watch it bounce off other buildings, balconies and walkways that are all rendered by not in areas the player can reach.

It leaves me all the more saddened that XIII was so lacking in sprawling environments, and saddens just a bit more that XIII-2 is obviously still not using the full potential and has been left to run on fumes for story.

Go, have fun, It hits everything from the 'checklist' of player complaints and goes far deeper than I think most people would have expected (myself included). Now that all the pieces are there-- the characters or the original and the grander physical scale of the sequel-- combined they would have produced an absolutely stunning sole product, but unfortunately we'll forever be forced to settle with many of the best bits separated out into two. For shame.

Edit-- Wanted to add (to make entirely clear!) for the record that I have wholly enjoyed the game. It might not have the story, charm and originality of the best modern RPGs, but it has a production value a million miles beyond what they only dream of, which is something I do hope corporate finances will allow to continue in the future.

Let me start by saying that I actually liked the original FF XIII. I know a lot of people didn't and I can understand why. XIII had its strengths, but it also had its weaknesses, to the point where I was honestly surprised when they announced a sequel.

But as many problems as XIII had, XIII-2 addresses these problems and came up as the game that the original XIII should have been.

It's no longer a corridor crawl. While each area has an objective and a map leading you to that objective, you're not shoehorned into going where the game wants you to go. You have room to explore and do side quests. So the linearity and lack of towns is very much improved with this.

The battles are a mixed bag. It's a little different engaging your enemy. It's a mix between having creatures pop up on the world map then having a limited time to either engage or flee. The actual battles themselves are similar enough to XIII that you could go straight from the old game to this one and feel right at home.

Boss battles, however, now include a new feature that's pretty much the same quick time events that you see in other games. However, it gives you ample warning that an event is coming up, the time to react is very generous and it doesn't end in a game over if you mess up. You simply don't end the battle as well as you could, which may mean missing out on some enemy drops or a slight change in story line.

I'm rather split on this. As far as quick time events go, XIII-2 does this very well, but I'm not used to having this kind of play mechanic in a JRPG. It could be a take it or leave it.

So, here's what XIII-2 did right. They refined the battle system, added towns and opened up the exploration. This does everything XIII tried to do, only better. This is the game XIII was trying to be. In this way, it is a very good game and well worth your money.

Here's what XIII-2 did wrong. It is a very short game. Just looking at the calendar, it was released on Jan 31. I just beat it yesterday. Eight days! I beat this game in eight days. I have NEVER beaten an RPG, let alone a Final Fantasy game, in eight days. Sure there's still plenty of side quests to do. There's plenty of content that offsets the shortness of the main quest. But the main quest is the real meat of...and the main reason to buy...a JRPG. It should never be so short, particularly a Final Fantasy game.

Also the ending. Yes, do let me rant awhile. Without spoiling too much, it's a bit of a downer ending. That I can handle. Crisis Core had a downer ending. Tomb Raider Last Revelation had a downer ending. Hamlet had a downer ending. I can handle downer endings.

What I don't like are three little words "to be continued." When you spend premium prices on a game, you shouldn't have to proceed to be nickel and dimed by downloadable content to get the real ending. Actually, I wouldn't even be so harsh about "to be continued" as long as the game itself had a self-contained ending, an ending that would make you say "yeah, there's more to see. I may get the next part to see how it resolves. But I feel satisfied with this. If this is all I see of this story line, I still feel like I had a complete story and therefore a complete experience."

But that's not what they do. The ending leaves everything in a very bad, very unresolved way. They let you know that if you want any kind of resolution, you're going to have to pay more, above and beyond the not so cheap sticker price.

Now don't get me wrong. I think downloadable content has its place (an outfit, a special weapon, new characters, new maps). But to make a precedent where you have to download the actual ending to the game above and beyond the sticker price is the start of a slippery slope of not having to have an entire game on a rather expensive disk, dolling out the rest of the game in an undetermined number of expansions that nickel and dime the players who already paid to be able to play AND FINISH the game.

So where does that leave this review? Does the good outweigh the bad?

Unfortunately, yes. The good does outweigh the bad. Like I said at the beginning of this review, I liked the original XIII. This does everything better. It's what XIII should have been. I may or may not go for the DLC that finishes out the game, though I'll be a sucker if I do. But the bottom line is that this game is fun. It has an emotional impact with the story. You come to care about the characters. It's a heck of a journey.

I would give this game five stars even given the shortness of the main quest. The ending and having to go to DLC in order to finish the game, however, is going to cost it a star.

It's a dangerous precedent of not having an entire game on the disk and forcing the players into downloading more DLC in order to have a complete experience. Video games are an expensive hobby enough without being nickel and dimed just to get a complete game.

I would say three and a half stars. Amazon doesn't deal in half stars. Since everything else about the game is so good, I'll be generous and say four stars.

I had awaited this game ever since I finished XIII more than a year ago. Personally, I enjoyed the story and game play of XIII more than XIII-2. With that being said, XIII-2 is still a great buy, especially if you enjoyed XIII. The big weakness, if you choose to call it a weakness, is the lack of difficulty in game because Normal is the highest difficulty setting available. The only way around this is performing a NCU (No Crystarium Usage) play of the game. The weakening of the SAB and SYN roles also takes away from the enjoyment of using those classes. Whether it is because of the overall difficulty or not, the monster difficulty is well below that found in XIII. Strategy is not needed and COM/COM/COM is by far the best paradigm in this game. The great plus of this game, besides the added exploration that most people complained about, is the ability to tame monsters. Monster taming is insanely easy, even rare monsters, even a feral link ability is used to capture. You can thus level up and obtain almost all of the monsters in the game to create a party of your choosing. The monster infusion ability allows you to create powerful monsters. Chichu/Omega/Twilight Odin/Proto-Behemoth among other monsters are all WAY stronger than Noel and Serah combined. Also, unlike XIII, you cannot mess up and miss anything on the first play through the game.

Arguments about needing profits aside, I also have a problem with high usage of testing of DLC content for this game. Although it was previously stated, it looks like there will be over $40 dollars worth of DLC content released for this game. That is absurd on a game that retails at $60. On the other hand, you can expect to have many things to look forward to if you buy this game.

If you are a fan of XIII, a fan of FF games, or are looking for a not difficult JRPG to pass the time, then this is the game for you.

Let me begin by saying that I hated Final Fantasy XIII. I hated the nerfing level cap that stunted your party's growth and development. I hated the rarity of Gil, which could only be acquired by selling items. I hated the tedious grind of upgrading weapons and accessories in the inventory - which involved killing the same monster (Adamantoise) for hours without end, for a rare item (Platinum Ingot) that never drops, that is sold for Gil, which is then used to buy more materials, which is finally used to upgrade your inventory (which is like tiny droplets in an ocean). Last but not least, I hated the lack of diversity and the linearity - which wouldn't have been an issue if the game as a whole had not been so restricting and claustrophic. So I had no intention of picking up the sequel . . . . . until my love for JRPGs and my craving for Final Fantasy Versus XIII finally lured me into biting the bullet.

With that said and done, I can now say that Final Fantasy XIII-2 fixed and improved upon anything and everything I hated about the original. The level cap was removed, so now the issue is no longer when you can, and cannot, level up - now it is an issue of when you want, and don't want, to level up.

The original was a straight line that only pushed the player forward - but the sequel is a timeline of "stages" that allows players to backtrack, enter, explore, and exit time periods without restraint. You can save your game at any time via the pause menu - without losing minutes off the clock or steps on the map. You can also return to the timeline at any moment via the pause menu - without losing collectibles or inventory.

Gil is rewarded after each and every battle. Not only that, but every battle rewards the player with Crystarium points to upgrade your party, materials to upgrade your monsters, and special items to upgrade your inventory. There are 160 fragments hidden throughout the game to collect. There are monster adornments to collect. There are NPC missions to complete, trivia questions to answer, time paradox puzzles to solve, and casino games to play. There are Chocobo races to compete in and bet on, and plenty of Chocobos to train for optimum performance. If all of that is not enough, there are plenty of monsters to defeat, collect, and level up. The monster hunting by it's self is addicting enough to add hours to your total time. The game as a whole is just a much more rewarding experience. There is just so much more to do, and the player is rewarded for any and every little thing they do. Unlike the original, the sequel never feels like a chore.

The majority of the music is really good and fitting for the tone, while some of the music is rather tacky and off. The graphics are just as beautiful as the original, though some of the environments are recycled over and over again with only different filters and palettes to set them apart from one another. Even if it does make sense with visiting the same areas, only different time periods, it still seems rather cheap to pad a game with 4 different colored versions of the same level. Despite all of that, it is still a very sharp and scenic game with some awesome visuals.

I'm a completionist - but the original is the only game I've played that I just couldn't push myself to complete and platinum. I beat the game, and I've tried many times to return to it and platinum it - but I'm bored within an hour of playing it. The sequel on the other hand, has had me hooked since the opening cinematic - and I'm not even remotely bored 30+ hours later. Final Fantasy XIII-2 deserves the accolades that Final Fantasy XIII was given, but did not deserve. Not only is it a good game, but it is a good Final Fantasy title. The magic has not completely returned, but some of the little morsels that made the older titles so memorable are definitely here and working some wonders. Some of the changes may have been small, but the results have been drastic.

I'd give this game an 8 out of ten. If you like the battle system used in 13 then think of my review as a nine out of ten instead of an 8. To me, the battle system relies too much on the the auto-battle button. Sure, you can can pick the abilities yourself, but this just isn't practical later on in the game. Most of the strategy lies in split second decisions in switching your roles and this does lead to some intense moments but i prefer a battle system more like the one used in 10.
I personally like the quick time events but there aren't that many and you catch monsters in the game and use them as your third party member but i don't really care one way or another for this. I do actually like that you only have two characters, I always have trouble picking which characters to use for other games because i usually like them all.
The story is told in an episodic format and the story to me was good but not great. It just didn't have the emotional impact of other games in the series. I can't really pin point why this is but it could be do to the fact that the story is really short. However, I thought the ending was great. It could have been amazing though if some earlier things were done better in the story. Some people have complained about the game "not being finished" and yes it does say to be continued but the game does tell a pretty complete story for the two main characters and some of whats happening with other characters can been found out in the game through side content. The dlc thats going to come out sounds like it's going to be side story's and not come after the ending so it's not like you have to buy it to complete the story.
There are multiple endings but only one "true" ending, however, the others are interesting and give you some important information.
There is a lot of content and side things to do and I found them fun but they could have been more interesting, a lot of the side quests are fetch quests.
The setting of the game is varied and beautiful, the soundtrack is one of my favorite in the series, and the characters are likable.
I must sound like i didn't like the game that much, but I really did enjoy it a lot. Compared to other games out today this game is great, just comparing it to say, my favorite final fantasy games 8 and 10, it's not as good.