Final Fantasy XIII-2
Jul. 10th, 2013 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroLightning has been trapped in some sort of otherworldly Valhalla, where she fights against an incredibly powerful and mysterious Caius. When a boy named Noel is somehow able to reach her, she sends him back to find Serah, who’s living in a world that seems to have changed—Serah is the only one who remembers that Lightning didn’t become the pillar that supports Cocoon above Gran Pulse. Together, Serah and Noel must travel through time, resolving paradoxes in the future to change the past.
It’s just as beautiful, graphics-wise, as the original. Starting from the first sequences, the game gives you cutscene battles that you can control via action commands. (Which you’re rated for at the end and can get items for. And I think this is awesome.) There are also “Live” commands that let you direct the character’s thoughts and comments, which can alter some scenes and get you bonus items.
The battle system is a slightly modified version of the one from the first game—you’re still pressing X and occasionally L1 to win, except you now have two human characters and a pack of three summoned monsters that serve as your third character. (The fact that the death of your leader isn’t an instant game over—both human characters have to die—makes battles feel more fair.) The Crystarium returns as the experience system, only now instead of plot-dependent progress ceilings, advancing each “level” is how you unlock new jobs and special ability boosts. (The monsters use it too, but you need to feed them vendortrash to advance them.)
The map system is basically the same, too, except that Serah (and Noel) can jump anywhere, which allows for a bit more variety. Encounters aren’t normally visible on the map screen, they appear randomly with a countdown clock, and if you don’t flee the area or initiate the encounter fast enough, you’re forced into battle with the “retry” option locked. (The game will occasionally just fling an insanely-hard encounter at you, expecting you to lose and retry, just like its predecessor.) Also, you can save pretty much anywhere, as long as you aren’t in battle or in a Live event; and you can almost always return to the Historia Crux hub area.
I’m reminded primarily of Final Fantasy X-2: In both cases, the first game was very linear and had a very engrossing plot; and both sequels went for a mission-based, modular plot with a lot of threads but a distinctly weaker feel. However, that game re-used protagonists, and this one upgrades a character who was practically a macguffin and introduces a new one. Lightning and Hope are important NPCs, and the rest of the cast get cameos…including Snow, who gets a remarkably short cameo in a story centering on the girl he’s engaged to and spent the last game trying to save. And she barely mentions him at all, which makes you wonder how much there really was to their romance.
The other game that this feels inspired by is Chrono Trigger, what with the emphasis on time travel via gates and attempting to change history for the better. They’re much freer with letting you see the changes you make to the timeline, though, and also with letting you revisit and replay areas so that nothing is really Lost Forever. Oh, and there are eight bonus endings you can hunt down after finishing the main story, most of which come from beating an impossible battle.
Whereas FFX-2 reused all of the first game’s maps, this has almost entirely new maps, but each one is used several times (for different time periods). Each version of a map has its own quirks and set of missions to complete (and hidden items, usually), but the (visible) treasure chests are the same in all version of an area and unlike in Chrono Trigger, if you open them in one place, you’ve opened them in all versions of that place.
Resolving paradoxes sometimes takes the form of killing a monster or retrieving a macguffin, but also includes being transported to a space between to solve puzzles. (Some of these are more doable than others; I suspect that most of them would be easier if you had a top-down view and a touchpad instead of the limited character-based view of the game’s engine.)
The “guide dang it” factor is impressive: Up until chapter four, you can miss a lot of sidequests and items, but keep chugging along on the main plot. Shortly into chapter 4, you are stopped short by the need to visit the same area in another time period, which requires a gate that you could have easily missed and a (sic) wyld artefact to unlock it that, while there were four you could have gotten, are also easily missed and could have been used in the wrong place. But the worst I found was a mission that requires you to look down off an otherwise unassuming ledge, spot the four-pixel treasure chest far below, and precision-throw Mog to get it. How do people without strategy guides find this stuff? It’s the 3D version of the old adventure game “pixel hunt”, where you’re expected to canvass each area extremely carefully and also talk to everyone after each plot point.
The soundtrack includes a heavy metal chocobo song, mostly used when riding “paradox-corrupted” chocobos. It’s so absurd it wraps around to awesome.
Unlike pretty much every Final Fantasy game to date, this ends with a big downer note and a “to be continued”; and even collecting every fragment and buying all the DLC mission packs apparently won’t change that. 13-3 has been announced already and is due out next February, but even so. (Yes, I’ll be buying and playing it. Duh.)
Overall: They obviously were trying to address a lot of the complaints people had about FF13. I think they did make a pretty good game in the process, but the story is weaker and I was less interested in the characters for the most part. If you strongly disliked FF13 (for any reason other than C’ieth stone missions, which thankfully are gone), there’s no reason to believe this will change your mind, but if you liked it, you’ll probably like this too.
It’s just as beautiful, graphics-wise, as the original. Starting from the first sequences, the game gives you cutscene battles that you can control via action commands. (Which you’re rated for at the end and can get items for. And I think this is awesome.) There are also “Live” commands that let you direct the character’s thoughts and comments, which can alter some scenes and get you bonus items.
The battle system is a slightly modified version of the one from the first game—you’re still pressing X and occasionally L1 to win, except you now have two human characters and a pack of three summoned monsters that serve as your third character. (The fact that the death of your leader isn’t an instant game over—both human characters have to die—makes battles feel more fair.) The Crystarium returns as the experience system, only now instead of plot-dependent progress ceilings, advancing each “level” is how you unlock new jobs and special ability boosts. (The monsters use it too, but you need to feed them vendortrash to advance them.)
The map system is basically the same, too, except that Serah (and Noel) can jump anywhere, which allows for a bit more variety. Encounters aren’t normally visible on the map screen, they appear randomly with a countdown clock, and if you don’t flee the area or initiate the encounter fast enough, you’re forced into battle with the “retry” option locked. (The game will occasionally just fling an insanely-hard encounter at you, expecting you to lose and retry, just like its predecessor.) Also, you can save pretty much anywhere, as long as you aren’t in battle or in a Live event; and you can almost always return to the Historia Crux hub area.
I’m reminded primarily of Final Fantasy X-2: In both cases, the first game was very linear and had a very engrossing plot; and both sequels went for a mission-based, modular plot with a lot of threads but a distinctly weaker feel. However, that game re-used protagonists, and this one upgrades a character who was practically a macguffin and introduces a new one. Lightning and Hope are important NPCs, and the rest of the cast get cameos…including Snow, who gets a remarkably short cameo in a story centering on the girl he’s engaged to and spent the last game trying to save. And she barely mentions him at all, which makes you wonder how much there really was to their romance.
The other game that this feels inspired by is Chrono Trigger, what with the emphasis on time travel via gates and attempting to change history for the better. They’re much freer with letting you see the changes you make to the timeline, though, and also with letting you revisit and replay areas so that nothing is really Lost Forever. Oh, and there are eight bonus endings you can hunt down after finishing the main story, most of which come from beating an impossible battle.
Whereas FFX-2 reused all of the first game’s maps, this has almost entirely new maps, but each one is used several times (for different time periods). Each version of a map has its own quirks and set of missions to complete (and hidden items, usually), but the (visible) treasure chests are the same in all version of an area and unlike in Chrono Trigger, if you open them in one place, you’ve opened them in all versions of that place.
Resolving paradoxes sometimes takes the form of killing a monster or retrieving a macguffin, but also includes being transported to a space between to solve puzzles. (Some of these are more doable than others; I suspect that most of them would be easier if you had a top-down view and a touchpad instead of the limited character-based view of the game’s engine.)
The “guide dang it” factor is impressive: Up until chapter four, you can miss a lot of sidequests and items, but keep chugging along on the main plot. Shortly into chapter 4, you are stopped short by the need to visit the same area in another time period, which requires a gate that you could have easily missed and a (sic) wyld artefact to unlock it that, while there were four you could have gotten, are also easily missed and could have been used in the wrong place. But the worst I found was a mission that requires you to look down off an otherwise unassuming ledge, spot the four-pixel treasure chest far below, and precision-throw Mog to get it. How do people without strategy guides find this stuff? It’s the 3D version of the old adventure game “pixel hunt”, where you’re expected to canvass each area extremely carefully and also talk to everyone after each plot point.
The soundtrack includes a heavy metal chocobo song, mostly used when riding “paradox-corrupted” chocobos. It’s so absurd it wraps around to awesome.
Unlike pretty much every Final Fantasy game to date, this ends with a big downer note and a “to be continued”; and even collecting every fragment and buying all the DLC mission packs apparently won’t change that. 13-3 has been announced already and is due out next February, but even so. (Yes, I’ll be buying and playing it. Duh.)
Overall: They obviously were trying to address a lot of the complaints people had about FF13. I think they did make a pretty good game in the process, but the story is weaker and I was less interested in the characters for the most part. If you strongly disliked FF13 (for any reason other than C’ieth stone missions, which thankfully are gone), there’s no reason to believe this will change your mind, but if you liked it, you’ll probably like this too.
