Hours Played - 8 hrs / 8 hrs
Starting Point - Beginning of FFXIII-2
Current Goal - Play around 5 to 7 hours and then move on to Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.
What Happened - After much struggling and blarghs, I managed to finish Final Fantasy XIII. Now, like I've said a couple times, I have no current plans to play FFXIII-3, but those could change. It's very unlikely that they do, but a chance exists. That's enough of that! It's time to get into the 5 to 7 hour review of... XIII-2!
Now, the only true comment I have before I get anywhere is this: What could the story possibly be? The only way this has a story is if they set a NEW story in the same universe, but otherwise, the first game tied up all the loose ends. (That I can think of.) Therefore, this game is already stepping on my feet. The first one wasn't that great, and now we've got a sequel here because Square Enix wanted to. Probably to make more money off the same idea. (One could argue that's the case with the entire series, but most of the games didn't have direct sequels so BOOYAH!) Again, I'll stop and wait to judge it from first hand experience. Where were we? Ah yes! I shall start the game now.
The game starts aaaaand...we're right into a big fancy cutscene! There's a strange looking throne, and Lightning is commenting on the situation at hand. Something about Etro and guarding its legacy. She goes on to say more about the place she is in with fun words like Valhalla. (Yay for Norse?) Now there's a guy falling through space, but we quickly jump from that to a guy in the water with a lady. However, she quickly fades into mist and then there are robot insects all over. The guy now has a very weird looking yet massive sword, and I'm already confused here. Obviously, I'll learn about it all later, but there's already lots of questions up in the air. Regardless, it's very pretty.
The guy with his army of robot bugs charges Lightning and her army of... monsters. Suddenly, we see the Shiva Sisters pop up, and they attack the guy with no success. There's quite a battle going on around. There's fighting, explosions, and sky lasers. Lighting is here now, and she's riding into battle on a horse (Odin). We learn that the guy with the evil sword is named Caius. He summons up an Eidolon that appears to be an evil Bahamut. It starts fighting with Lightning, and seems to be winning when it flings her across the area. She's caught by Odin in the distance, and evil Bahamut gives chase. It's the first official battle!
To be fair, it's less of an official battle and more of a tutorial one. So far, the battle system seems pretty similar to FFXIII's, but it does look and feel improved a bit. Anyways, the evil Bahamut is actually called Chaos Bahamut, and I get to fight it while riding Odin. Not much to this battle, so I easily beat it. However, the battle continues on into a new little bit called "Cinematic Action." Simple explanation? It's Quick Time Events.
Now, I read an article/rambling a while back about one person's opinion on the Quick Time Events in gaming. Very few games have done it well enough to not just feel like a big pile of lazyness. That was basically what they said, and I could easily agree. QTEs can be pretty cool, but there's only a handful of games that have truly done it right. (Among those is my favorite... Resident Evil 4! LOVE IT!) Anyways, back to FFXIII-2.
With Chaos Bahamut's brief defeat, Caius has caught up to Lightning, and we get to fight through the Cinematic Action. As far as it goes... I did okay but not really fantastic. I succeeded in the end, but I think I made a bad decision on a few attacks. She gave him the beat down, but he's not out for the count yet. Then the game flashes back to that random guy floating in empty space. (I mentioned him earlier... briefly.) He's now dropping from the sky, and Lightning pulls out another Eidolon to fly up and catch him. I haven't posted character art in a while, so... WHY NOT!
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| Noel Kreiss |
Unfortunately, the two don't have much time to talk because Chaos Bahamut has reappeared for ROUND TWO! FIGHT! Unfortunately, there's really not been any improvement in one case. The Auto command is pretty much the #1 way to do fights, and it works well enough that there's no reason to NOT do it. It's both a good and bad thing, but I won't drag on about it. This fight actually takes place in the air with Lightning riding a flying monster and Noel tagging along for the ride (but not the fight). We blast Chaos Bahamut out of the sky quite quickly, but that's not going to be the end of it.
Noel asks Lightning how they are going to beat it, but she tells him that she has a different job for him. She wants him to go and bring her sister Serah to this place... This place is VALHALLA. Noel asks why of course, and Lightning says that only he and Serah can change the future. That being said, she then proceeds to magic up a Moogle. The Moogle changes into a bow (weapon), and then Lightning gives Noel the Moogle-bow to give to Serah... So that makes a big pile of sense.
There's no time to explain though because Caius has come back around and is ready to strike again. Noel runs for it, and Lightning has to jump upwards in order to counter a giant meteor that Caius just summoned up. Lightning "catches" the meteor, but she doesn't seem to stop it because it comes crashing down. Noel makes it through a nearby time gate that Lightning pointed out though and TIME JUMPS! (Yeaaah, this game is going to involve a lot of time travel. WHAT FUN!) From here, Noel is going back in time to locate Serah and deal with all this crazy nonsense. Time for a SCENE CHANGE!
Now we're in a scene of Serah of seeing all of this in a dream but not realizing it is more than a dream. Then she hears a crash outside, and suddenly her clothes have changed into sexy magical clothes.
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| Serah Farron |
The NORA group is all around and trying to get more game airtime! Also, they're fighting off the robot bugs with some other people. It's good to see the NORA team here because the time they had in the last game was like less than 30 minutes. Anyways, they're all fighting robot bugs, and then Serah is about to be attacked! Suddenly, Noel appears from nowhere to save the day! He hands Serah the bow, and it's time to battle. I get to clear the beach of all the bugs, and then the NORA group sets out to investigate the object that crashed nearby.
After they head out, Noel explains that he actually came in with the meteorite that just fell. Also, Lightning sent along the bow for Serah. The bow suddenly changes back into the Moogle, and now things are just getting weirder. Know what? I'm not going to worry about the weirdness and just continue onwards. It's time to go investigate the meteorite for ourselves! With that said, I can finally explore a bit more and try to see what all feels improved.
First and foremost, I actually have the ability to explore! It's not just a single path that I can only go forward on. Well... It's not MUCH more than that, but it's still more. (I will take whatever I can get though!) I'd like to say again that the battles do feel improved. It's minor stuff, but they seem to move and flow quite a bit faster. The battles are more random as well now. Instead of monsters always being on the field, they suddenly appear out of nowhere, and you can choose to fight or run. No longer do you have to sneak up on them to get a preemptive strike either. Instead, a meter appears on the screen, and you simply have to strike them before the meter runs out. Green is preemptive strike, and Yellow is normal battle start. However, if the meter runs out, you are ambushed and lose the Retry option. Battles seem to move smoother now and feel a little bit faster. ANYWAYS!
As we fight our way to the meteor, it seems that time is ripping/bleeding around us. There are portions that are aging faster while others are going slower or not at all. (Plants around are representing this.) When we finally approach the impact site, Cocoon and its crystal pillar suddenly disappears into nothingness! We could be worrying about that, but then suddenly a TRANSDIMENSIONAL ROBOT MONSTER APPEARS! BOSS BATTLE TIME!
Of course, this is the first REAL Boss Battle, so it's not really much of a challenge. With very little trouble, we manage to beat the strange monster, and then it goes back into its warp hole. (It was only half here for some reason...) Down to the meteorite site to find... MORE PLOT! Noel reveals that he's actually from the future of this world. In that time, Cocoon hasn't existed in ages, and he's actually the last of humanity. How far? It's seven HUNDRED years in the future! (Current time is 3 AF [After Fall of Cocoon]) He reaches out to the meteorite, and it suddenly changes into a mysterious device. Noel identifies it as the TIME GATE.
Supposedly, we can use this device to travel throughout time and try to meet up with Lightning in Valhalla. So... This game is going to be all about time travel. The discussion has a bit more details, but I'm glimpsing over most of it to keep the post short enough. Now the game jumps to the next day. There's a lot of small conversations I have with the NORA group, and I'm allowed to answer them all as I like. (This is part of the game's LIVE system where I can learn different things based on what I ask.) It helped reveal a lot of details about the characters and all the unknown information about "What has happened since FFXIII?" The game even features a slightly modified clip of FFXIII.
Basically, it's the very end clip of FFXIII, but there's a change to what happened. Whenever Serah and Dajh are approaching the group, Lightning is suddenly not there this time. Everybody claims that Lightning is part of the crystal with Fang and Vanille now, but Serah doesn't believe them. She remembers seeing Lighting there while the rest don't. After the replay and telling Noel of this, Serah discusses with him the possibility of the timeline being changed by someone. And once again, you now have the story of this game. Someone has gone around time and screwed up everything by creating paradoxes. Lightning's absence is believed to be one of these.
Again, there were a lot of details going down, so I either missed them or glossed over them. After all that talk, Noel suggests they look around the area for "artefacts" that should be around here. He says that the artefacts are things that have come through time and would be things lost from other points in time. He blames the meteorite for breaking the time barrier here and causing part of this. So! I get to spend the next several minutes on a hunt around the small area of New Bodhum.
Exploring the village doesn't reveal any artefacts immediately, but I did learn about what's going on, Serah's current status, where Snow is, and a bit about Noel's hometime. (WORD OF THE DAY!) Besides finding artefacts, I'll also be taking part in all kinds of side missions. Finding people, finding things, fighting monsters, or some combination thereof. One of the first missions I got here in New Bodhum was chasing down this suspicious kid. After cornering him, I had to "talk him down" to learn what he did. The game switched to a "Live Choices" bit where I had to try and figure out what he did. As it turns out, the kid took something of Serah's, and it doesn't really matter from here on. Suffice it to say, it was important to the story and plot, but it had really nothing to offer beyond that. (He took her engagement necklace that Snow got her.)
I've gotten far enough now that I figure it's time to talk about the game's level up system. The Crystarium returns, but it's been worked over and VASTLY improved. In FFXIII, you had a path for each role (6 total) that you had to level up individually to level up the job. However, it worked out like the Sphere Grid, and the growth was super slow. On top of that, I never felt a reason to get all of the roles for everybody either. It required too much CP to unlock them. Overall, it wasn't a very good system.
How does FFXIII-2 rectify this? Simple really! There's only ONE path now. From the very beginning, both characters (Noel and Serah) come with three core roles: Commando, Ravager, and Sentinel. You advance along the path by buying the orbs with Crystal Points. When you buy the orbs, you are allowed to choose which role to upgrade with the purchase. The role you choose gains a level. Levels lead to new attacks and abilities. On top of this, you gain a plus to each of your stats with a bonus to the key stat of the role chosen. (Example: Choosing Commando gives you a plus to Attack, Magic, and HP and then a bonus plus to Attack.)
It's such an improvement over the old system that I can't begin to describe how happy I was with it. Even with just a few levels thrown around, I could already tell the difference between my builds for Noel and Serah. I made Noel more physically involved with Commando and Sentinel while I had Serah focus on magic with Ravager. Once you reach the end of the path (shaped like the character's weapon), the game resets the path and allows you to choose an upgrade! Upgrades include new roles, boosts to current roles, accessory slots, and more! Once again, the growth system just feels so right and rewarding. The Crystarium wasn't the only thing that changed around either!
The Paradigms system got a minor tweak added to them. It wasn't anything major, but it did add a very nice feature. Paradigms now have a "Tune" aspect to them. Their tune affects the targeting scheme of the Paradigm at hand. Normal tune just makes the roles function how they are programmed. The "Wide" aspect makes everybody spread out their attacks / abilities across all enemies. The "Cross" aspect comes in with the opposite to make the Paradigm focus on a single opponent. It's a good idea for sure. That's enough about the gameplay though... BACK TO THE STORY!
I spent quite a bit of time trying to find the artefact in New Bodhum... Turns out it was in Serah's room all this time! It's a strange mirror just sitting on her wall, and it produces a funky crystal shard. Noel says that this must be the glitch in time, and that we can use the crystal shard to travel through the Time Gate. Despite everything she's seen, Serah is still skeptical of Noel. She doesn't know if she should believe him or not, but she does have a single question for him... What is it that Noel is after? Noel says that in the future he became the last of humanity. Now that he's in the present (past for him), he wants to try and change time so that everything else gets fixed! TO THE TIME GATE!
Of course, the trip couldn't go off without a hit, and we run into our little transdimensional robot monster friend! It's name... is GOGMAGOG! BOSS BATTLE TIME! TRANSDIMENSIONAL ROBOT EDITION! And this battle goes pretty much like the last one. The only addition is that the boss puts up a fancy barrier to reduce my attacks quite a bit. Of course, the barrier goes down if you stagger it, so there's really nothing special to say here. Once I stagger him, the battle is basically over at that point. With his defeat!... Nothing special happens. He's just gone again. Also there's a Chocobo now. Yay!
The game explains that I can use Chocobos to get around quickly without running into monsters, but it'll cost me a Gyashl Green to do it. I don't have one now, and I have no reason to go back so... Let's just go past that and straight to the Time Gate for a SCENE! As the two approach the gate, Serah apologizes to Noel for not initially believing him. She realizes that she recently went through the same feeling. (Pardon, it explained earlier that nobody else noticed Lightning not being there besides Serah. They didn't believe her that time suddenly changed, and they looked down upon her for constantly being like "LIGHTNING SHOULD BE HERE! Only Snow believed her, and that's why he ventured out to try and save her.)
While Serah and Noel talk, the NORA groups spies on them from up above. All three of them fess up for doing things to her stuff, but they were all good things! They cleaned Lightning's knife, are going to take care of Snow (a cat), and made a new chain for her engagement necklace. YAY FOR FRIENDS! With all that said, it's time for us to use the artefact and blow this joint. The two leap inside the gate and WOOP WOOP WOOP! The game hasn't forgotten about Final Fantasy snobby foreshadowing though! As they step through the gate, the scene zooms over to a pair of people watching this from a ledge. It's a mystery girl and Caius (bad guy from Valhalla a ways back there).
Now our dynamic duo are in the time stream and talking. Noel identifies this place as the Historia Crux. He says it is like a crossroad for the time continuum. From here, the game switches to a menu interface, and now here's one of the main features of FFXIII-2. While in the Historia Crux, I'm able to choose different points in time and travel to them. Of course, there are several points spread throughout, and there's a chance that I travel both forward or backwards in time. There's a lot of different aspects to the Historia Crux, but most of them are either slightly weird or not available to me yet. SO! I'm going to jump to the only other timeline I can right now. The time and place? 5 AF at the Bresha Ruins. The game has details here for this specific part of time, but I'm not going to explain them and instead TIME JUMP!
Woop woop woop. We are in Bresha Ruins (which is inside Cocoon) and Noel is admiring the view. He doesn't get much time though as a giant robotic arm in the middle of everything comes to life. It starts attacking us and BOSS BATTLE TIME! Once again, I say BOSS BATTLE TIME, but what I really should have said was STORY BATTLE TIME! Because it wasn't very difficult, and halfway through the battle it changed into a Cinematic Action bit. The only relevant thing to mention this battle was a new effect called Wounds. Attacks that Wound cause a small portion of damage to your total HP. If you try to heal with a normal potion or Cure, the Wound damage stays and you only heal to the new total. This means you either have to quickly beat the enemy who can Wound or use a specialized healing to eliminate the Wound damage. Pretty interesting mechanic for the game.
The battle was pretty quick and basic though. I fought it, it cased Wound damage, the game went into two separate Cinematic Actions, and then it was staggered and dead. Then it wasn't dead, but Airships flew in and blasted the shit out of it. Yay for the army! Then we're in jail. We were taken prisoner by the army around here (who look like PSICOM soldiers). The creature we fought, called Atlas, was actually part of some Paradox effect. However, it's believed that we caused the effect somehow. Now we're in jail and not sure what we will do. Serah and Noel start to discuss how they ended up here and what time it is. They know they're in Cocoon for sure, and the year seems to be the future. Serah believes this based on the recent completion of a giant elevator being built from Pulse to Cocoon in her time. It wasn't finished then, but it was supposed to be finished soon...like it is now.
As the two are chatting, a girl named Alyssa comes by and lies to the guard. We're freed from jail, and we talk with her a bit more. She explains that she's a member of the Academy. (A group of higher learning to try and promote use of mankind's technology versus fal'Cie.) Like everybody else, she's researching the Atlas creature like everybody else. However, she spotted the two of us emerging from the Time Gate and is curious to learn more. On top of that, she wants us (random people) to help deal with Atlas. She figures we're related to it's reaction and might be able to change things.
I don't know how we could be related, but I guess we're going to try and find out. We wander out of the ruins dig site and up into the area around that. The first thing we run into is a specialized monster battle where we LEARN THINGS! I realize I've seemingly gone over a lot of tutorial stuff here, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to what FFXIII felt like at times. The entire game was a tutorial when it comes down to it. This game summed up like 80% of the tutorial within the first couple hours. Anyways, what this battle reveals is the ability to capture and train monsters! It might sound silly and/or copying (POKEMON), but it actually works out quite awesomely.
Randomly in battle, monsters will turn into crystals and join you. Each monster has a single role assigned to it and serves as your third teammate. They get their own stats and own Crystarium line to build. Instead of Crystal Points though, they are built with the use of Monster growth items. (Basically the same items from the last game that you used to level weapons and accessories.) Besides your main two, you can have three monsters on direct standby and unlimited monsters in your stockpile. You set each monster to a Paradigm, and as you switch Paradigms in battle, it switches out whatever active monster you have. Monsters also get Limit Break style attacks that can be unleashed with button presses. There's a lot of options you can do with your monsters, and overall, it's a really nice addition to the game. THUMBS UP SQUARE!
And that's all I'm going to say about that. Onwards to explore the rest of the area! The ruins contains two or three other Time Gates beyond the initial one we came through. Each gate seemingly leads to a different point in time, but they'll only open when you have the correct artefact in hand to open them. Also, I learn about a few side missions in the area. Nothing too big really, but I grab them up to do later. Despite the multiple gates right now, the only way to get through is getting an artefact while dealing with Atlas. (It is the beginning of the game, so I won't look down upon that.)
Eventually, the game brings me to a divided path. Although Atlas appeared before as just a giant robot hand, it reappears with its full body and ready to fight! However, at the same time, a strange device appears in the nearby ruins. The game then presents me with a decision! Do I charge at Atlas and take him on directly? OR Do I check out the strange device and hope it's Atlas-related? Find out! After I take a small break from the game.
Now the reason I inserted that is because of what I learned next. As I play through the game, I open up more and more gates. It's possible to close previous gates though. This resets the timeline and allows me to replay through previous parts of history and cause different outcomes in the story based on decisions I make. It's both a good and bad thing. It's cool to be able to see how things work out differently, but it sucks because that means this game is all about seeing all the different possibilities. It's got a looot of gameplay in store for anybody willing to stick along. It's cool to be able to reset the game and redo crucial points and find out what's different For me though... It's like a perfectionist nightmare. Constantly going through again and again to do every single little thing. Just...blargh.
Back to the previous decision, I figure they want me to take the device right now, so I'm going to try and just beat the giant robot Atlas straight out. BOSS BATTLE TIME! ...and I failed. Yeah, he was insanely powerful and killed me with the very first strike. SO I GUESS MY CHOICE IS #2 AND ONLY CHOICE! I don't have to go too far to locate the strange device, but NOT SO FAST DANIEL! Apparently I can not simply walk to the device without being sucked into a TIME LABYRINTH! (Sorry for all the CAPS LOCK going down here.) Of course, now we're all wondering what a Time Labyrinth is. Out of game language-wise, it's a puzzle I get to play and solve to fix things. In-game language identified it as an anomaly caused by the paradox, so we have to fix it to fix the anomaly. As far as puzzles go, it's really nothing too hard. It's just the "take the correct path to collect all the items but don't backtrack or step on a spot twice" thing. It was stupid amounts of easy this time, and I finished it in less than five minutes.
With the puzzle solved, we return to regular time and activate the device. Turns out, the device simply slows down Atlas, so we're going to have to confront him anyways. I'm going to assume he's a lot easier now though. BOSS BATTLE TIME! Now he's only got like 10% of his original HP bar, and his attack power was taken down nearly 80% as well. This giant bot is super weak now. There's nothing really special to comment about the fight, but I am glad to have a Medic role available. (One of the monsters I caught, called a Cait Sith, has the Medic Role. One of my favorite monsters so far.) With his defeat, we jump into another Cinematic event. The duo jumps all about Atlas and notice the giant crystal on top of his head. They strike at, destroy the crystal, and Atlas is down for the count.
With Atlas defeated, he disappears from this time, and that fixes the paradox of this time. After that, we get a story scene about what Alyssa is all about here. It's not really related to Serah or Noel, so I'm not going to get into the finer details. Suffice it to say, she needed our help so that she could see something for herself. Also, Noel throws forth the theory that all these paradoxes and Time Gates have appeared because someone is trying to mess up the timeline. We don't know who it is yet, but we're going to have to catch that person if we want to fix time and put everything back in place.
With Atlas gone, we're able to look around for any artefacts so we can jump through new Time Gates. The game lovingly shows me where two artefacts are, and I jump after them. What I obtained were the Eclipse Artefact and the Reunion Artefact. Now, before I go any further, I'm going to jump through a quick detail breakdown. As I travelled through the current time, I actually completed a couple of Side Quests. (I didn't mention them earlier because keeping things short and sweet.) The Side Quests earned me items, Crystal Points, and Crystal Shards. The Crystal Shards unlock entries in the datalog that helps to explain all sorts of details. Not always story details, but they at least explain elements of what is going on. Crystal Shards drop from major events and enemies along with Side Quests like I did.
With another decision ahead of me, I decide to use the Reunion artefact and travel through the Reunion Gate. TIME JUMP! WOOP WOOP WOOP. Actually, before that happens, the game has a go at more foreshadowing. Serah has a random vision as they approach the gate. Noel sees her reaction and asks if she is having visions. Serah denies it for now, but Noel most likely knows the truth. We're back at the Historia Crux, and I have two choices of where to go. (I went ahead and used the other artefact to unlock both path choices.) Yaschas Massif at 10 AF or the Sunleth Waterscape in 300 AF. As far as time I have left, I can probably only hit one area up. With that in mind, I choose the Sunleth Waterscape in 300 AF!
Before I do that though, I head back to visit New Bodhum in 3 AF. I wanted to see if anything had changed since I left. Aaaand nope. Nothing changed. Onwards to the Sunleth Waterscape! As soon as we drop into the Sunleth Waterscape, it's already apparent that things aren't going well here. There's a bunch of tiny flan all over, and they're all heading to one location. Serah has another vision here, and she sees that Snow is here. (Here's updated Snow below.)
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| Snow Villiers |
For this boss fight, Snow joins our group as a guest fighter. The fight ends up going something like this. The giant flan is constantly regenerating while we strike him, so I'm going to have to keep after him and rely on Staggering to drastically damage him. He's not just about healing himself either though, so I have to keep a good rotation of Paradigms to avoid dying. Overall, it was a pretty rough battle. I didn't die or lose anyone during the process, but I had a few close calls. The battle included two different Cinematic Actions as well. The first one was where Snow protects the group and simultaneously casts Protect on everybody. The second one was the final strike where we blew it up! HUZZAH!
Unfortunately, as the battle concludes, the flan start to come back together and reform. Whatever's making it come together won't be stopped that easily. Snow wants to go for Round 2, but Noel (the smart one) pushes everybody to run away instead. We escape from the giant flan while it's reforming and now... The group talks.
Noel asks Snow what he thought he was trying to do. Taking on the giant flan by himself and then wanting to keep on fighting despite the futility of it. Snow's not too happy with Noel either though, but that's because Serah was dragged into this. Anyways, they talk a bit and work around to "Why is Snow here?" Snow admits that he saw Lightning in his dreams, so he started time jumping to try and fix things as well. In the current time, he's trying to defeat this giant flan abomination because it ends up leading to Cocoon's destruction, both directly and indirectly. The flan is slowly melting the crystal pillar in this area. This causes Cocoon to become unstable, and that leads to people fighting unnecessarily in their fear and confusion. In the end, the war brings Cocoon down and smashing into the ground.
Noel confirms that from what he knows... That does sound about right. Regardless, they all agree that this giant flan is a paradox, and that we're going to have to make a few time jumps to find out where it's coming from. However, to open the gates, we gotta locate an artefact first. AND THE HUNT BEGINS! To be fair, it was a pretty short hunt, and it really only introduced one thing while I did it. The Moogle, the one that turns into Serah's weapon, can talk! Also, you can throw him around to collect items you see in the distance. So yaaaay! Also, I haven't mentioned him a whole lot, but I figured I'd post a picture of him anyways.
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| The Moogle |
As it turns out, the rules of XIII-2 time travel prevent Snow from tagging along with us. All I had to say here was "Oh darn" because I'm cool with the minimal amount of Snow. It's time for another TIME JUMP! Woop woop woop. Our next location? THE COLISEUM. ??? AF. The question marks of course brought up questions, but those questions are quickly answered when I get there. I'm greeted by a being simply labelled the "Arbiter of Time". He tells us that the place we are in is one that exists outside of time. It's a place where a final battle of some sort will be held. He speaks of an item present in this place that brings a great omen by simply existing here.
With that said, he orders us to leave, but Noel decides to haggle with the almighty being. Noel says that we'll leave if the being hands over this misplaced item. It's a win for him and a win for us. Despite not liking us, the Arbiter hands over the artefact and then tells us to be gone. We have the artefact in hand now, but then Noel and Serah have a little talk. It's mostly about how Noel believes Snow is too reckless. Serah reminds Noel that he's not too far off though and that he shouldn't be reckless either. (I do apologize, but I need to gloss over a lot or this post is going to just keep going.) Anyways, with the artefact in our hands, it's time to return to the Sunleth Waterscape.
Once there, I try to use the new Artefact to open up the other Time Gate located here. As it turns out, this artefact won't work for the current gate. So... what am I supposed to do now? The group considers the idea that this spot in time might actually be a DOUBLE PARADOX! (Dun dun duuuuuun!) Therefore, this game isn't nearly as straightforward as it might have currently seemed. Well, I can't make anymore progress here, so I guess I have to head the only other direction I can... I jump to the Historia Crux and head for the Yaschas Massif in 010 AF. WOOP WOOP WOOP! (That's right. I'm going to do it every time.)
For those who forgot, the Yaschas Massif is the main area that was explored when the group touched down on Gran Pulse in FFXIII. However, the current setup is pretty dang spooky looking. It's all really dark looking, and the sky is darkened by an eclipse. Noel comes in for a small history lesson to say what he knows about this current situation. Apparently, in the past, the area was covered in a great darkness by an eclipse, but he finds it strange that only the current area seems to be covered. What he remembers involved it covering the entirety of the land. (I assume...) Well, I guess we should investigate it a bit more and figure out what's going on.
The area is interesting to explore, and it's got quite a challenge to it. With the area being all dark, monsters are all about. The science-y people that are set up here have lights posted all around. If I stick to the lights, I can avoid monsters. That's a good thing since Behemoths are all about the area, and I'd really like to avoid those. Unfortunately, I screwed up and ran into one. On top of that, it caught me in a "no retry" battle. I won't go into the specifics, but I came close to Game Over several times during the battle. When I finally succeeded, I didn't give the game another chance to mess me up. I ran straight to our destination. However, that destination revealed another transdimensional robot monster for BOSS BATTLE TIME!
Although it's a different one from the last time, it fights fairly similar to the previous two transdimensional robot monsters. It did bring quite a bit of challenge to the table, but overall, I was able to beat it without losing anyone. The biggest strategy it had going was deshelling and deprotecting my party. When we defeated it, the duo figured everything was over, but then it surprised us by ripping open a wormhole! It attempted to the the group into it, but it wasn't prepared for the next bit... Hope pops up out of nowhere and smacks it in the face with his trusty electrified boomerang! The creature gets conked in the head and disappears for good. And thus, we get to meet... OLDER HOPE!
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| Hope Estheim |
How does Hope know all of this? Because of SCIENCE! He's a leading man from the Academy, and he learned about the time we appeared seven years ago at the Bresha Ruins. Using SCIENCE! they've been studying the effects of time from all the Paradoxes and were able to predict when the duo would appear again. At this point, Hope asks us to follow him so that he can show us something. As we explore the ruins area, Hope talks about what has happened and what they're currently learning from this place. For the most part, the ruins we are in were once an ancient city known as Paddra. It was a great nation built by a group known as the Farseers. The Farseers were ruled by a Seeress that was known as Yuel.
Apparently, these people survive through their times because they were able to predict the future and avoid disaster. However, it seems at some point they foresaw a great disaster that would destroy everything. The people were split on what to do. Many wanted to avoid it much like previous disasters while the current leader was going to wait for the disaster to come upon them. This caused the people to divide and brought about their downfall.
After telling us all of this, he shows us a strange device they found in the ruins that they call the Oracle Drive. They believe it's a device which holds the future visions as seen by the great Seeress. Strangely enough, as most of this was being described, Noel seemed to have quite a bit of knowledge about it all. He also reacted quite strangely when the Oracle Drive was mentioned. It's kinda suggesting that he's related to these details somehow, but there's not enough evidence for a definite deduction right now. Thus... I will gloss past it.
Hope decides that the group needs to see something and turns on the Oracle Drive. The first footage it showed was the moment when the group combined to form Ragnarok and saved Cocoon. That didn't seem too special, but then the main clip Hope wanted to show us pops up. There's just a small blurred clip of someone fighting another person. It appears to be Lightning fighting the Caius person in Valhalla. However, we don't really know because the footage was messed up. Now that he has shown us everything, Hope hands over an Artefact that they found in the ruins. He says that they can't seem to use it, but he figures that we can make use of it to jump through a nearby Time Gate.
With the artefact in hand, I head to the Time Gate and prepare for a final jump!... Is what would happen if I weren't wrapping it up here. I've turned this "5 hour play" into eight hours, and it's time for us to wrap things up. What little I've played of the game impressed me quite a bit, so you should know that what I'm going to say is pretty positive actually. Without further ado, let's jump right into...
Quick Review Time!
Now, I'm not going to go into a huge amount of detail because this post is already decently long. THEREFORE! I'll cover the basics of what I think, throw some Pros and Cons out, and then give a small paragraph of either "You should totally get this" or "Don't bother".
- THE PROS
- Battle system feels improved.
- Crystarium has changed and is only one path now, but the growth feels better and more customized!
- Noel seems like an actually decent character. Serah isn't too bad either!
- A more interesting story with better characters.
- Exploration is a thing now!
- Looooove the monster obtaining and leveling mechanics.
- You can sorta play this game without playing XIII! It has a "Beginner's Primer" where you can read a lot of the story from XIII. I'm mixed if you should play XIII before XIII-2 though... (Definitely shouldn't play it AFTER though.)
Now we list the cons.
- THE CONS
- Despite improvement, the battle system is still pretty much the same because Auto command is too useful.
- Why is armor not a thing? Was armor too complex for our minds?
- Time travel story is time travel story.
- Adding on to the previous point, the game's story might be interesting, but it is a time travel story with multiple jumps. Things start getting all tangled as you have to jump to random points in time to find artefacts and then return to other points in time to use the artefacts to jump to DIFFERENT points in time entirely.
- The loading can sometimes last a REALLY long time.
- The game has DLC. I wouldn't care about the costumes and arena battles, but the actual story episodes that are "canon" kinda pisses me off. Why wasn't this just part of the game? Seriously guys. :I
If you hadn't gotten the message yet, I'm saying you should play it. It's better than the original game, and you really don't need the original game to play it. You'll miss out on a few small pieces, but not enough to matter really. And that is all! Final Fantasy XIII-2 pulls out from being "just a sequel" and actually comes to outperform the game it's supposed to be a sequel of. If you ask me, that's just freaking crazy. So all that leaves us is...
OVERALL VERDICT - You should go play it. If you enjoy the Final Fantasy series or want a good core RPG, it's more than likely to deliver to you. If you liked FFXIII, you'll love XIII-2. If you didn't like FFXIII, then I'd say to at least give XIII-2 a chance. It's so much improvement over the previous game that it isn't funny. And here is where I will stop talking...
Ending Point - Historia Crux - About to jump to Oerba 200 AF.
Current Party -
- Serah - Commando Lvl 15, Ravager Lvl 25, Sentinel Lvl 16, Saboteur Lvl 18
- Noel - Commando Lvl 23, Ravager Lvl 13, Sentinel Lvl 20, Synergist Lvl 18
- Monsters
- Caith Sith - Medic Lvl 26
- Zwerg Scandroid - Ravager Lvl 27
- Hoplite - Commando Lvl 19
Next Goals - Start Final Fantasy Mystic Quest!
Side Note - Yes, I know I'm super freakin' late on this release, but my time is just so limited and then I end up not doing anything. SORRY! Going past that, I hope to start Mystic Quest very soon. That's a pretty simple title, and it should go really fast though. Look forward to it! Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more... RECURRING FANTASY!
~May the Crystals Guide Me~
