Time travel to fix the distortion of the worlds that the darkness has caused.

User Rating: 7.5 | Final Fantasy XIII-2 (Limited Collector's Edition) X360
Story: Three years has passed since Gran Pulse and Serah still believes that Lightning is somewhere out there, only problem is that everyone else seems to believe she has died. Serah then find herself in the middle of an attack in New Bodhum only to meet a man from the future, Noel Kreiss, who tells her that "Lightning is waiting". After an explanation of what's going on, Serah decides to join Noel in restoring the time in the world and finding a way to reunite with her presumed dead sister.

Gameplay: What I liked about XIII-2 was that they thrived away from the linearity if you compare it with XIII. The time travelling concept really makes the story more fun and enjoyable.
Each and every time in the "Historia Crux" offer side quests that actually are heavily dependent on time travelling which means that a particular part of the mission can only be completed by travelling to another time era of the same world for example.

Like every Final Fantasy game, you either have a TBB ( turn based battle ) or ATB ( active time battle ) in this case, the battle system is active and therefore you find that there are a lot more things going on during a battle than the typical 'attack and wait for your next turn'. Naturally, there will always be a time when clearly hate this system, for example during a really tough boss, your HP being low enough that the next attack they deal to you will be your final one and you only need to wait a tiny millisecond for your own attack gauge to fill in order to deal your final and deciding the battle, but of course right then the enemy suddenly seems to have a completely refilled gauged and kills you, causing you to restart the whole battle... That sounds like my experience with the final boss, haha.

I would've loved to see some changed to the Crystarium – The all too well-known level up system. The one that people seemed to be complaining about in XIII. Personally I love it due to it's extreme resemblance to FFX, one of my absolute favourite FF games. However the Crystarium is almost exactly the same! The only differences is that this time the Crystarium for the characters look like constellations with the crystal nodes being the actual growth and upgrades. The other thing that differs is that you can now have a partner monster! ( Hello, added RPG element~ )

Enemies/Monsters: The antagonist of the game is of course, the cause of the darkness to the world, known as Caius Ballad. You will encounter him throughout the game a few times , but the enemies you will encounter the most will be monsters in all shapes, sizes and difficulties.
I felt that some monsters had gotten "smarter" during battles, actually attacking strategically at times. I liked that because it added a challenge to battles at times and they didn't end up finishing 10 seconds in because of my characters being over leveled.

Skills: 99% the skills you acquire throughout the game are through the Crystarium. We still have the 6 roles – Commando, Ravager, Synergist, Medic, Sentinel, Saboteur – to use in the paradigm system to utilise different paradigms that are suitable depending on the battle.
The other 1% is for Moogle! Our floating white "teddy bear" is back! Moogle is a good luck charm that Lightning gave Serah, and it also is Serah's weapon in combat. Outside of combat, Moogle can get some skills that, for example, allow you to get boxes that are out of reach to you.

Overall: Very good game. I enjoyed it. There where times I I did feel that it ended up being repetitive, not to mention the rage I had during the final boss. I'm not much for grinding, but at time I really did feel that the game required you to grind in order to progress with a game simply because of a monster being too strong for you to win over.

But as always with Final Fantasy, the scenery and BGMs make the experience so much greater and to mention the story being very good too. It's sad that my brain instantly told me it only deserves a 7.5/10 from me, but I can rally understand why I gave the grade, and I really hope that Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII will be a better experience for me in the XIII saga.