***Final Fantasy XIII-2***

[ojste]

don't want to start a new thread so asking this here:

i'm a huge fan of the final fantasy series but i pretty much hated xiii... found it extremely linear and gave in round about ~10 hours in. tried to play from the start a couple of times but always lost interest.

question is, is xiii-2 worth a go? obviously i haven't finished xiii (and i don't intend to), does the story follow on or is it not important and more like a new side story?

the thing i hated most about xiii was how linear it was, there was 0 exploration and it felt like a constant dungeon crawl with no breaks. is xiii-2 any different?

cheers!

 

[Mark1989]

don't want to start a new thread so asking this here:

i'm a huge fan of the final fantasy series but i pretty much hated xiii... found it extremely linear and gave in round about ~10 hours in. tried to play from the start a couple of times but always lost interest.

question is, is xiii-2 worth a go? obviously i haven't finished xiii (and i don't intend to), does the story follow on or is it not important and more like a new side story?

the thing i hated most about xiii was how linear it was, there was 0 exploration and it felt like a constant dungeon crawl with no breaks. is xiii-2 any different?

cheers!

There is plenty of exploratio in 13-2, Plenty of other side quests to do and there is a casino and chochobo races etc.

You dont need to finish 13 it explains a little but if you want tull answer it includes a primer regarding each chapter in 13 which explains everything its just a fair bit of reading to do.

13 is a good game though so i dont understand why you wont play it? If its only due to it being linear then its a shame

 

[BunnyKillBot]

There is plenty of exploratio in 13-2, Plenty of other side quests to do and there is a casino and chochobo races etc.

You dont need to finish 13 it explains a little but if you want tull answer it includes a primer regarding each chapter in 13 which explains everything its just a fair bit of reading to do.

13 is a good game though so i dont understand why you wont play it? If its only due to it being linear then its a shame

Speaking as somebody who has played through 13 to completion, i can safety, it simple isn't worth the bother. The flaws are too many and the 'satisfaction' too little. In what world could FFX13 possibly be considered 'a good game'. Putting aside the many, many flaws, the game appears to have been designed with the following algorithm:

1) Make a sorta-functional, story driven game engine
2) Work out ways to deliberately **** off the player and screw the game up to add difficulty and 'fun'
3) Profit

Secret step 4) Dope all your script writers with crystal meth and force feed them montage clips of the stomach churning 'humanity' based on morality soley derived from episodes of the teletubies meet dora the freakin explorer. Seriously, most of the near ending sequence is just a montage of derpy derp huggy moments as our characters grow and learn to love themselves and hey, maybe they aint so bad after all. Oh what a fun journey we had together. Go **** yourselves

From the uncustomisable, atrocious AI ('derp derp, I can't cast raise until both surviving party members are fully healed. DERP!') to the linear level design, comprising of 'This is the way to go, but walk a little ways down this side path to get an item, then return here. K thx', to the fact you HAVE TO FINISH THE GAME BEFORE YOU CAN EXPAND YOUR CHARACTER LEVELS PAST A CERTAIN POINT and obstensible complete the side missions.

There is a reason SEs latest FF mmporg failed so badly they havnt been running subscriptions for a year, and had to call in a crack team of actual game designers to rewrite the entire engine to ostensibly release the game as 2.0

 

[Phatjayunoi]

Got the recently released Jihl Nabaat DLC.

Really is a fun battle. And for laughs, I used monster Sazh to kill her for "revenge".

Such a shame she really was a useless character in XIII. With her character design, she would have been more appropriate in Final Fantasy Type-0 instead.

 

[_dogma_]

On the last episode now. Having to wait till my next day off before I can finish it. Got really annoyed by the Hands of Time puzzles, I am terrible at that kind of thinking. Luckily, there is a nice webpage that works at all out for you and I managed to get past them

 

[PaulM]

I loved Final Fantasy VII-X and I even put about 60 hours in to XIII, so I'm really trying to enjoy this game... but I'm about ready to give up.

The story is 'OK', however, what's spoiling it for me is the battles seem ridiculously easy (so far at least, I'm about half way through the game). I've done no grinding, I've even stopped levelling characters/monsters in the Crystarium, yet you can get 5-star in about 99.9% battles by just using auto attack paying absolutely no attention to what's going on. Bosses sometimes need an occasional paradigm switch, but that's about it. Does the game get any harder ?

 

[Phatjayunoi]

Quite honestly, if you are at a decent level, not really. I too would agree that the battles in this game are incredibly easy, a fault of the whiners of the previous game and Square-Enix's **** poor job at attempting to address that feedback. Plus being a Commando is ridiculously overpowered in this. Probably the only difficult battles are some of the optional bosses or the DLC Colosseum battles.

Either way I still enjoy this game, since it at least offers much more replaybility than it's predecessor, and the Colosseum battles are fun, with more to come in the future.

The upcoming Lightning DLC is said to be quite different with the battle system as well, though in terms of difficulty, we have no idea.

 

[Demoniser]

A bit late to the party but I just completed the main story after picking the game up for the bargain price of £15

Spoiler

I was very apprenhensive going into this game but i have to say, I genuinely enjoyed it. it's a vast improvement over FF13.

I thought the characters were much more likeable than the previous game. Hope especially, after he'd grown up was a far more enjoyable character to watch. Noel and Serah weren't to bad as protagonaists either, although Caius seems to be a poor mans Sephiroth.

While the game doesn't have a world map, which seems to be the traditional method for exploration, the Historia Crux gave you a decent amount of freedom.

I bought the PS3 version and there was some very poor framerate issues in some areas, especially in Academia 4xx (which i thought looked fantastic).

Interested to see where the story goes now, what with the game ending on a cliffhanger. Final Fantasy 13-3 perhaps? I quite like the idea of a trilogy tbh.

All in all, i really enjoyed the game. For £15 i've racked up close to 60 hours so far so i've definitely got my moneys worth.

 

[Gti]

So my PS3 did a number on itself and i couldn't get the FF13 save game off it. I'd just landed on the planet below and i refuse to go through it again so could somebody run through what happens after landing on the planet so i can just go and buy 13-2 and pick up with what sounds like a much better game?

 

[Phatjayunoi]

FFXIII-2 has a Beginners Primer section on the main menu screen with voice over and in-game footage to explain what happens in each chapter of the first game. Other than the more in-depth explanations, history and mythologies from the Datalog, you won't be missing out on what had happened during the main storyline, so you can just carry onto FFXIII-2 without too much problems.

 

[Phatjayunoi]

Some details and screenshots for the upcoming Lightning DLC. (She has over 50K HP!)

What surprises me is there's some others too.

Some more costumes for Serah, Noel and even Mog which I think look really cool and fits the old-school Final Fantasy style, but a Snow DLC and a final monster for the Coliseum which is going to be the hardest monster in the entire game.

Lightning DLC + New costumes

Snow + Valfodr DLC

 

[Malevolence]

A bit late to the party but I just completed the main story after picking the game up for the bargain price of £15

Not as late as me.

I just noticed that my local supermarket has it for that price too. I put of buying it on release for two reasons, firstly, despite being a huge Final Fantasy fan, I wanted to see how it was recieved and secondly because I had so many other games that I hadn't completed, hell I even had some still in their wrapping. That said, I think I may pick XIII-2 up tonight, even though I still have a few trophies to finish on XIII.

 

[Demoniser]

Some details and screenshots for the upcoming Lightning DLC. (She has over 50K HP!)

What surprises me is there's some others too.

Some more costumes for Serah, Noel and even Mog which I think look really cool and fits the old-school Final Fantasy style, but a Snow DLC and a final monster for the Coliseum which is going to be the hardest monster in the entire game.

Lightning DLC + New costumes

Snow + Valfodr DLC

As much as i like the look of the costumes, I'd rathey the concentrate on actual gameplay based dlc.

Looking forward to the extra episodes, although i haven't completed the Sazh one yet, the gambling gets boring after a while. I would have liked something along the lines of Triple Triad or Tetra Master from FF8 and 9.

 

[Phatjayunoi]

To be honest I think Chronobind is one of the best and most addictive minigames designed so far in the series.

And yeah the Sazh DLC is actually kind of boring, but at least it is easy to do, and the CHOCOBOCOLINAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA stuff is quite amusing.

 

[GTanny]

Just picked this up from Tesco for £15 so I couldn't resist, i played XIII up to the large area with all the crystals to do (chapter 11??) and seemed to enjoy it up to that point but going on and back to the tunnels seemed a bit of a chore so i never did finish it (from what I have read i only had 5 or so hours left but I never did

everything I have read about this seems to suggest they have learnt from XIII and fixed a lot of the problems so I am hoping I will enjoy this one enough to get it finished even though XIII left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth (the more I think about it the more I wonder if it was really that bad)

 

[Malevolence]

I've had it for a couple of days now, and I'm still confused by the new Crystarium. Why couldn't they have kept it the same as XIII?

 

[Dannyb01y]

I've had it for a couple of days now, and I'm still confused by the new Crystarium. Why couldn't they have kept it the same as XIII?

It is pretty confusing at first.

Basically the larger nodes you give you an extra ability bonus whereas small nodes just increase the level of an role. I'm led to believe that its best to use Commando on big nodes for Noel to increase his attack and Ravager to increase magic for Serah as these are their best natural roles. Using them for health bonuses is apparently a waste.

Definately worth googling a few guides on it. Supposedly it doesnt matter too much when you've maxed out all roles which I'm close to doing and most bosses have been a breeze since but Im having a trouble killing a few post game notorious enemies myself...

 

[Phatjayunoi]

Don't forget that the large node extra bonuses also depends on the number you are leveling up from is even or odd, as they will apply towards different stats. So it's an extra bit of complication right there and requires you to plan beforehand.

I once mentioned before that for a first time playthrough, however you level up the Crystarium shouldn't pose too much of a problem, you'd still be high enough to breeze through the game.

I also wanted the linear progression back from XIII just because it was so easy to understand but after a while, you can make sense of it and find that it provides so many different options and builds for other playthroughs.

Here's a guide from GameFAQs which should hopefully help for the best optimisation.

 

[Demoniser]

It's insanely easy to max out all of the roles in this game. You have the battles in Achylte Steppe ??? that can be repeated for 30,000CP. In fact, that area just seems to be farming central for CP/monster materials.

From what i remember most of the bosses weren't that difficult although Caius battle 1 and the final battle did hit me hard to start with, i think those were the only times where i had to go and level for a bit and then come back. The latter boss was because i think i messeed up serahs HP from levelling her up wrong.

Playing other games atm but i do want to come back and 100% all of the bosses at some point.

Anyone know when they'll finish releasing bosses for the coliseum?

 

[Phatjayunoi]

This month or the next we should be getting the other DLCs.

And yeah it is very easy to gain CP and level up in this game since it a lot quicker than XIII. It's all down to how you level up the nodes effectively, otherwise you might have a certain stat that is very gimped.