Serah returns with a new partner Noel as they travel the time line to search for her sister Lightning.
The story revolves around Lightning's sister Serah, who had a dream of Lightning fighting a dark mysterious figure in an unrecognizable land. Very shortly, she's joined by a stranger from time, Noel Kreiss. As it turns out, Noel came from 700 years in the future, is the last member of the human race, and has been sent by Lightning herself in order to help Serah repair the timeline and save the future. 500 years after Serah's home world of Cocoon began to fall towards the larger Pulse and was saved by a giant crystal pillar, that pillar collapsed and Cocoon finally crashed. Now with the help of Noel, the two begin to navigate the Historia Crux in an effort to save Serah's future while fixing a multitude of paradoxes that arise.
The story's very hard to take seriously, even harder to understand and makes Doc Brown scratch his head on numerous occasions. What doesn't do the story any favors is how it allegedly portrays Serah and Noel to be the only people who can travel through time, but familiar FFXIII faces are seen in the game spread throughout several centuries. It's clearly obvious that the story was loosely crafted as a means to attempt to diminish the linearity that the previous Final Fantasy was so criticized for. Since certain dialogue sequences have multiple options, the whole paradox story line has an added bonus of giving the game some replay value.
Ridiculous story aside, for those who felt too closed in with Final Fantasy XIII, you will be quite pleased to learn that Final Fantasy XIII-2 not only offers up more open areas to explore but also structures the levels in a branching layout called the Historia Crux. Of course, certain levels can only be accessed by completing previous ones, but for instance, Episode 3 can be started via two entirely separate locations in different times. There are also several optional junctions in the Historia Crux that you can skip entirely if you wish to focus solely on the main story. There is a negative side effect of this Crux, though, and that's several locations are revisited many times as a result of side quests which makes the game feel unnecessarily padded.
Whereas Final Fantasy X-2 completely reinvented its battle system with the Dresssphere mechanic, Final Fantasy XIII-2 has played it safe and changed its battle system very little. It still consists of the same six jobs and the Paradigm combinations you use them in have still retained their same names and functions. There are still the same spells and attacks, and the game's even taken a step backward by scaling down the spell list and not including the much needed Bravery, Faith, and Hastega spells for the main characters.
There is one major change to the battle system, though, and that's the addition of capturing monsters for use in combat. Since the game's main characters are only Noel and Serah, it creates a vacancy for the third party member. This is where monsters come in, and you can capture or "tame" just about any of them, including mechanical beasts. Each monster specializes in one job, and you can only have three in a Paradigm Pack at one time to use in battle. They also have their own unique abilities called Feral Links, which either inflict damage on the enemies or grant beneficial buffs to your party. This makes for a lot of customization, but it also serves to pad the game even further as you might end up wasting time gathering leveling materials for the wrong monster. Alas, the game also lacks anything remotely close to an Eidolon or any other form of mighty summonable monster.
The way you encounter your enemies has changed as well. Final Fantasy XIII had their monsters roaming freely in their environments, and you could chose to walk up to any of them you saw and engage them in battle. In Final Fantasy XIII-2, random encounters have returned. Instead of being automatically sucked into battle, however, your lovable Mog acquaintance uses a feature called the Mog Clock, and gives you a few seconds to run away if you want, or try to lash out at your enemies to start the battle with a preemptive strike. If you successfully land one, you begin the battle with the speed-increasing Haste, but sadly, this is one of the very few ways to get Haste, as there's no way to cast it. Still, the new encountering method is the best of both worlds.
The Crystarium (the method of leveling up your characters' jobs) has returned, but it's been simplified. You no longer have different directions to go in when leveling up a certain job. You merely pick a job you want to level and apply CP (Crystogen Points) to gain stat bonuses and new spells. You level up monsters in the Crystarium as well, but it works a little differently. Instead of using CP, they use materials, which can be collected as drops from slain enemies. The materials are broken up into five different grades, and as the monsters' levels increase, more items and higher grades are required. This makes leveling monsters a little more time consuming than leveling Serah and Noel.
As the time traveling duo progress through their journeys, they come across crystalized moments in time called fragments. FFXIII-2 employs a customizable mechanic called Fragment Skills, which can give you new abilities and augment existing ones. In order to you unlock a Fragment Skill, you first have to reach a certain point in the story or collect all the fragments in a particular group. You can then do such things as jump farther, reduce the price of items in shops, increase or decrease the enemy encounter rate, and even greatly increase the amount of CP earned after a battle.
You unlock these Fragment Skills in the casino-themed land of Serendipity. Also in Serendipity, you can play slot machines and partake in chocobo races. In order to enter a race, you first have to collect a chocobo from the field, and there are several different colors and varieties. If you take the time to level your chocobo before you register it, you'll find its performance greatly enhanced. Unfortunately, the act of chocobo racing is about as exciting as watching the Kentucky Derby with sedated horses. You merely watch your chocobo sprint around in a circle and try to balance your boost meter. If you're willing to spend the time in these races, however, you'll walk away with some premium goods.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 has added QTEs (Quick Time Events) to the mix in what they call Cinematic Action. During a few important cutscenes and even after a few boss fights, you'll get a prompt for Cinematic Action. The game will throw button prompts onscreen where you'll have a moderate amount of time to react, and sometimes it will give you multiple options of choosing magic or attacking with a sword. The game's climax also features a moral choice and all of a sudden, you feel a new pressure on you as you have only have seconds to decide. Thankfully, Square-Enix has kept the use of QTEs to a minimum, so for those who aren't a fan of the mechanic, they won't find their enjoyment diluted by this aspect.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a graphically impressive game, just as its predecessor was, but it may not be as polished as it could have been. Environmental textures are still a little muddy when viewed up close, and characters' fingers are rather blocky. The art design is as fantastic as you would expect from a Final Fantasy game, and each level is imbued with wonderful lighting and special effects. Take the time every now and then to just look up and appreciate the amazing skies. Graphics in battle are just as amazing with fluid animations on the characters and loads of special effects including flashes and clouds of smoke. The pre-rendered cinematics - something that Square Enix has always been well known for - are drop dead gorgeous, and are some of the best in the series.
Final Fantasy has also always been known for their sound design, and Final Fantasy XIII-2 does not disappoint. The sound effects are terrific, from the sparks flying of swords clashing to the explosions from Firaga and the zapping of Thundaga. Giant monsters have mighty roars and energetic chocobos have rallying kwehs. The soundtrack is pretty good itself, featuring lots of songs with lyrics being sung, and some incredible music being played during action sequences. The only problem with Final Fantasy XIII-2's audio rests in its voice acting. Although the main cast performs well, so many NPCs (non-playable characters) just don't come off right. They sound stiff; jilted. It makes you wonder why so much attention was put on the main cast but no effort was spent to ensure the quality of other characters.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 does address a few problems of the game before it -primarily XIII's overly linear nature - but it also creates a number of problems for itself. Even with monsters constantly at the ready, Serah and Noel seem much lonelier than they actually are. There are a few much larger areas to roam about, but the game doesn't capitalize on these opportunities and doesn't fill them with enough side quests and monster hunts to continue to occupy the player. In the end, you have a fun RPG for sure, but one that doesn't try hard enough to distinguish itself from its predecessor. It also doesn't tell its story well enough, confusing you greatly by piling paradox on top of paradox. Still, fans of the Final Fantasy XIII will find it worth checking out its sequel.