A step back from FF13 meaning newcomers and fans of the predecessor will most likely find it boring
User Rating: 7 | Final Fantasy XIII-2 (Limited Collector's Edition) X360
Fans were quite unhappy with the direction of Final Fantasy series, and FF13 was heavily criticised for being too linear, full of cut-scenes and the battling system could easy be won without much human interaction. For this sequel, there has been many changes, but it seems as though everything has been stripped-down or out-right removed without replacements, which probably will end up being boring for fans of the predecessor and boring to newcomers too. The story is quite confusing like last time. In simple terms, you have to time-travel and change the past in order to prevent the world of Cocoon falling into the world of Pulse which will happen in the future. On your journey, Serah is accompanied by Noel who is from the future, and is assisted by the magical cat; Mog, whose simple graphical style looks really out of place in comparison to the brilliant graphics of everything else in the world. Mog tries to help out uncovering hidden items, and you can also throw him towards out of reach areas to grab other hidden items. One of the big changes are the fact there are only 2 playable characters, and your third party member is made up of a monster of your choice. It seems strange that Serah, Noel and (in my case) a Flan will team up and there doesn't seem a great incentive to switch characters throughout the game (I only replaced my initial set of monsters once and stuck with my next choice till the end). So without your party members switching as you progress through the story it can feel a bit boring. Noel and Serah are decent characters but weren't as likeable as any of the characters from the previous game. The levelling system via the Crystarium has also been simplified. You don't have 1 for each role; you just have 1, and you can focus entirely on 1 role if you want, so I ended up levelling Serah up to level 75 in the ravager style pretty quickly before unlocking other roles such as the Synergist role. The weapon system has been scrapped and now you only have a limited selection of low end weapons. You can't equip many of the accessories because even a basic item costs a whopping 35 points to equip when you start off with a low capacity like 40. When you do have the choice to increase capacity, it only increases by 20 or 10 up to the maximum of 100. The enemies now just re-spawn near you, and pre-emptive strikes can be achieved by running up to them and pressing A. You can easily get 95% of the battles to start in your favour, and the enemies are pretty weak and not as challenging as before (apart from right at the end where the difficulty ramps up by an insane amount). The boss battles don't seem tough either, but feel slightly more epic with the inclusion of cut-scenes to conclude them. In these cut-scenes there are quick-time events in which you have to press a button to carry out the action but this isn't exactly captivating game-play. There are no summons in the game, but in some ways these have been replaced by the monsters Feral Ability which are also controlled with the quick-time event. A major plus point is that all the backtracking in the first game has been removed, and you can quit out of the area and travel to another place with ease. The main game is fairly short (took me 23 hours including some extra side missions) but can be extended by the many secrets and side missions which can be very time consuming. Even when you complete the game, you get additional challenges. To conclude, Final Fantasy XIII-2 isn't a terrible game, but the predecessor wasn't perfect and the critics somehow claim this is an improvement when it's actually a step back.
