An emotional story and brings back traditional JRPG elements such as towns and NPC interaction.Brings back the FF magic.
The love story between Serah and Snow has a more emotional feel in FFXIII-2 compared with FFXIII,because FFXIII-2 makes Serah feel like a real person and she is more sensitive and caring in FFXIII-2 and certain story scenes in FFXIII-2 make the love story between Serah and snow very heart felt and the love story between them doesn't rely almost entirely on melodrama like FFXIII's did.
The story for FFXIII-2 is set 3 years after the conclusion of FFXIII.The people on Cocoon are not longer oppressed by the dictatorship which controlled Cocoon's residents in FFXIII and people are now freely able to travel between Cocoon and Gran Pulse and people on Cocoon and Gran Pulse can freely interact with each other now and many former Cocoon residents have begun a new home on Gran Pulse.Lightning has gone on a journey(which is kept a secret why at first)and after she didn't come back after a long time,many people believed she was dead,except Serah who has been having dreams about Lightning being in some place,so Snow goes searching for Lightning and after 2 years since he begun searching for Lightning he hasn't returned either.
Monsters begin appearing out of nowhere and start attacking people and a man from the future named Noel arrives in Serah's time and he explains in the future,he is the only human remaining and disasters have killed off every other person and he claims he's seen Lightning in a parallel time line,which is enough reason for Serah to go and help Noel try to save the future by changing time while she searches for Lightning and Snow.
The story does a good job of showing how it isn't easy for Serah to just leave the village she's living at,because even though she wants to find Lightning and Snow...
MINOR SPOILER BELOW
she is a teacher now and teaches kids and her students look up to her and she has an emotional attachment to her kids and she worries about how they will cope if she were to just leave
END OF SPOILERS
As you would expect,the story becomes a lot more than just this and the story does a good job of being not black and white(especially when characters named Caius and Yeul get more and more involved in the story)and the way timeline changes affect the story make the story more emotional,captivating and epic.If you've played FFXIII before,you will be happy to see familiar faces from FFXIII in FFXIII-2's story and I don't want to spoil the surprise for you,but I will say I like how Hope has matured greatly in FFXIII-2 and he's gone from being a weak,cry baby teenager in FFXIII to an intelligent scientist who plays an important part in trying to save the world and he seems stronger in FFXIII-2 too.
I've mentioned how Serah is portrayed so she is more like a real person and is more sensitive and caring in FFXIII-2 which is a nice change.Noel is an 18 year old man whom it's easy to tell he's psychologically scarred,I won't say about what but I will say the pretty but mysterious female character named Yeul is very important to him and he feels guilty about certain things that happened to her.Caius believes changing timelines is wrong and he becomes an antagonist in the story and he is also trying to protect Yeul and the fact Noel and Caius have different agendas and fighting against each other but both care about Yeul creates some very emotional story moments.Yeul is a mysterious,pretty lady who talks in a very soft,gentle voice and she has an important role to play in the story regarding the timelines and like I've said she is involved in some very emotional story scenes.
Snow eventually shows up in the story and he has a more goofy,dorky personality in FFXIII-2,but it's funny and charming to see.
FFXIII-2 introduces some other new characters including a couple of bubbly female characters whom help brighten up the story a bit.
The story becomes more epic and emotional than you would originally think but I don't want to spoil it for you,but I will give some examples below under spoiler warnings if you're still doubting FFXIII-2's story
MINOR SPOILERS BELOW
The time paradoxes threaten to destroy spacetime itself and literally cause the world to fall apart.You will meet certain characters multiple times in the story but they won't remember you sometimes because a timeline change has caused them to never met you before you remeet them.People(including certain characters)will literally disappear/die due to timeline changes
END OF SPOILERS
If you haven't played FFXIII,FFXIII-2 explains important events in FFXIII very well aso you will understand about the love story between Serah and Snow and who Lightning is and what Cocoon is and important things that characters in FFXIII did.
The gameplay in FFXIII-2 is much improved over FFXIII.Like I've mentioned,the environments are more open,so you can do more exploration.There's towns to explore and NPC's doing daily activities whom you can talk with.There's lots of mini games including casino style games and chocobo racing(for anyone who loved the Gold saucer in FFVII,you can have more of that type of fun in FFXIII-2).
I haven't played FFXIII in a long time,but the battle system for FFXIII-2 feels more fluid and more natural than how I remember FFXIII's battle system being.Once again you'll use paradigm combinations during battles.I won't go into how the paradigm system works but it's a very creative and fun system to use if the battles are faced paced and it's also quite tactical.A new feature to FFXIII-2's battle system is being able to use monsters in your party(including things such as chocobos,robots,cait sith etc).and this isn''t just a simple gimmick,because the monsters have various attributes(such as auto haste)or certain skills(such as healing magic or sentinel abilities or ravager or commando abilities) and you can level them up or fuse them and you can set up certain monsters to appear in your party for various paradigms and when you change paradigms another monster who's set up for that paradigm will appear and since you have many monsters with different attributes and many paradigm combinations to use,you can experiment quite a bit for ways to give your party that little bit extra advantage over enemies.
Chocobos are in many areas or you need chocobos to access certain areas.
The game requires you to do a bit of fetch questing,and the fact the items are invisible until you scan the nearby area they're in and they could be hidden in big areas in various time zones means this game can be hard to beat without a guide.
The game has MANY sidequests that will take tens of hours to complete.The game has multiple endings and at times you have to make dialogue choices which can change the story and lead to a different ending and you can go back in time and make different decisions to see different endings or to re-fight certain bosses that you want to earn a 5 star ranking against but were unable to do so on your fight attempt.There's secret bosses to find that are very tough to beat.
The game has numerous puzzles too and some of them drag on a little bit too long or use too much trial by error for my liking but some of the puzzles are fun if I do them for a short time.
There isn't much else I can say about the gameplay except it's great and it brings back the fun old style JRPGameplay while improving the great battle system FFXIII introduced and even after you beat the game(which can be done in only 25 hours),there will be lots more to do if you want to platinum the game(including lots of exploring).
The visuals for the game are beautiful and have a nice mixture of colorfulness and darkness and Sci Fi atmosphere and nature.There's beautiful beachside areas with beachside villages,as well as the futuristic city of Acamdemia which has lots of sky scrapper style buildings and flying cars and it looks amazing at night when it's lit up and has rainfall and raindrops landing on the screen for a nice effect and during the day it looks amazing too.There's wide open grassy plains similar to the wide open grassy areas on Gran Pulse in FFXIII-2 with some huge enemies and the people who live in that grassy area in FFXIII-2(I forgot it's name)have a certain culture.There's other diverse environments and towns with their own culture/style to to explore.
The cutscenes/CGI show a lot of detail for skintone and hair and environments have a nice combination of artstyle and technical realism.You'll see spectacular cinematics once again,and some of the cinematic scenes can last quite a long time.
The voice acting is decent,but I wish the game had a Japanese voice acting option with subtitles.The music does a good job of matching the environments or what is happening in the story and you'll hear music that ranges from J-Pop/electronic sound to more peaceful/relaxing music or emotional music or intense music for intense scenes.
Overall,this game brings back some of the Final Fantasy magic that I think was lacking in FFXII and FFXIII(I know FFVII CC was awesome and has the FF magic but I'm talking about console games)and if you love FF or you used to love FF but gave up on the series after FFXII an FFXIII,you should give the series another shot with FFXIII-2,it's got an emotional story,great gameplay with traditional JRPG style gameplay and it has charm such as bringing back moogles and lots of mini games.