It's difficult for me to properly gauge where I should rank FFXIII-2 because I'm utterly at loss as to what I should think of it. I mean, by its very nature, the actual product isn't terrible, otherwise I would have quit sometime in the Archylte Steppe, but it's impossible for me to look at the game favourably without lamenting what it represents and the ethos surrounding its development.
I went into this thinking: you know what? Maybe I have been in the internet echo chamber for too long since realising how much I didn't like FFXIII. Maybe I needed a sense of perspective; an opportunity to actually try out the game and look past the usual rhetoric and hyperbole. Why not actually hold back my reservations and play the game for myself? Maybe most people are right; maybe this is the infinitely better game, and even I can get a good kick out of it. It's managed to convert people who were aghast at how FFXIII turned out, and they've ended up loving the sequel. By no means was I expecting to ever love the game, but at the very least it could alter my sense of perspective.
Sadly, actually playing through FFXIII-2 has mostly confirmed my suspicions. The battle system has served to remind me of the frustrations I've had with the battle system of the previous game, because every time I watch my characters stupidly move by themselves around the battlefield, often next to each other, so an area effect spell or ability launches them both into the air, I ask: why couldn't the player move the characters around? When my boyfriend saw me playing, he asked the same: "can you not move them?". I've also heard from someone who has the Ultros and Typhon fight DLC purchased how she was only able to win that fight because she was lucky enough to have Typhon's burp attack only hit Noel because Serah had decided to wander off away from the attack range field at the most fortuitous time, allowing her to win the fight by a fingernail.
By and large, the game is well, easy, even on the default difficulty. Goodness knows why it needed a difficulty even lower than the default, because even without the usual grinding routines, FFXIII-2 barely offers a challenge whatsoever. It's possible, unless some poor soul decides to take on the Royal Ripeness the second time, mistaking it for a story quest; or taking on the Long Gui in the Steppe, thinking you have to get past it first to get to the Faeryl behind it, to essentially cruise through most of the battles in the game, stopping only in a couple of occasions when a very occasional and inconsistent spike shows up on the way, such as the Proto-Behemoth. When for most of the game, a battle can end without a Paradigm Shift being necessary, the game designers have done something wrong there. FFXIII actually encouraged a heck of a lot of Paradigm Shifting. FFXIII-2 has problems with balance that it doesn't seem to. Note I have said "MOST". I'm not saying that you can cruise through FFXIII-2 without EVER shifting paradigms unless you are ABSOLUTELY overpowered, and even then...
The way the dialogue options have turned out also confirm my suspicions. I knew they would be purely cosmetic, as a knee-jerk "hey, westerners like Mass Effect, right?" without realising what people like about the Mass Effect dialogue options. They offer choice; FFXIII-2 was not designed to offer genuine choice, no matter how much the development team scrambled to de-linearlise the experience. I didn't realise that at a few points, only one option was right in order to progress, and when they were trying to be funny, only made Serah sound like an idiot. I realise that other JRPGs have done similar things that don't offer any tangible choice or divergence in the narrative whatsoever, but jeez, I remember the Live Trigger in FFXIII-2 being bloody marketed and showcased as a "hey, fans! Look at what you can do now!". I mean, do what exactly? There's no point to these things if you have no idea how it should be integrated into the game.
What I particularly enjoy about RPGs of all kinds and styles, is the world building and the lore. FFXIII did well with the lore, but catastrophically with the former. FFXIII-2 still has plentiful lore, with interesting tidbits here and there about the Paddran civilisation, but they were largely lost in this void of time travel and paradoxes that I couldn't help but find myself disconnected from. I couldn't seem to care about this world I was supposed to save anymore than I cared about Cocoon when its civilians were just unlikeable from all the propaganda and ignorance. I look at areas that are apparently the same, but hundreds of years apart temporally, only to notice the exact same layout with occasional hexagon walls and rocks blocking certain paths, different weather, and different colours. The whole world is a disconnected series of random locations, with multiple different versions of these locations set in random other time periods. It's less of a world and more like a series of monster-infected arenas, broken up only by the occasional casino that doesn't give you all the goods unless you cough up extra for DLC, and certain areas of a map with uninteresting NPCs passing as "towns". Oh, and Academia. I'll be fair. Despite the technical horrors of its frame rate, Academia 4XX AF is the best part of the game.
Here's something I'll say about FFXIII. That game had a clear, rough direction it wanted to go - well, sans the battle system and how exactly it should play; they couldn't even decide how it should play until the demo came out with Advent Children on Blu-Ray. It was Toriyama and Kitase admitting that their strengths laid in linear, tight story-driven experiences, and they wanted FFXIII to reflect this favoured direction of theirs. Sure, my ideal Final Fantasy game, after having played through FFXII, and especially after having played through Xenoblade, is the complete opposite of that, and inevitably I came to see FFXIII as nothing more than a bitter disappointment, but that game had a vision and a direction to head to.
FFXIII-2 doesn't seem to. And dare I say, neither does Lightning Returns. People have said that FFXIII-2 is simply a reactionary product, not a proactive one. FFVII led the way. FFX led the way. FFXII, despite the hate it also gets, also led the way. FFXIII-2 doesn't lead anything. It's a product that is being led, and that's the difference. It was marketed as a reactionary game the moment they assured fans that it will fix the problems of the previous game. After playing it for myself, I'm certain that the people who have labelled it a reactive product are definitely correct in that regard. Of course, they had the best intentions in trying to respond to fan criticisms, and I admire that bit of humility from them, but let's think about this for a bit. Do fans really know what they want? The fanbase isn't even a homogenous entity. The product, conceived to be a reactionary response, suffers in that it lacks its own proper identity as a Final Fantasy game. It suffers in that it simply tries to pursue trends going on in the industry. It suffers in that the developers don't know how these trends should work, and how it should conciliate with some members of the team who have different ideas of what should be done.
As a product, FFXIII-2 isn't a disaster. I think it's mediocre, though serviceable, but that's relative given the state of the JRPG genre this generation. I pretty much expected to get what I received, so I acknowledge that tempered expectations goes a long way. I can't fathom however, what people see in the game when they rate it 10/10, or call it one of the best titles in the franchise - or current gen title even. It does "fix" some of the things that FFXIII was godawful at like actual exploration value (to a degree), but at the same time it does a plethora of things worse than its predecessor. I actually think FFXIII has the better story, and dare I say, the better battle system.
BUT, it's more of what FFXIII-2 represents that leaves the more tangible bitter taste in my mouth. It's another egregious example of Square-Enix dirtying the bed and dropping the ball this generation.
I went into this thinking: you know what? Maybe I have been in the internet echo chamber for too long since realising how much I didn't like FFXIII. Maybe I needed a sense of perspective; an opportunity to actually try out the game and look past the usual rhetoric and hyperbole. Why not actually hold back my reservations and play the game for myself? Maybe most people are right; maybe this is the infinitely better game, and even I can get a good kick out of it. It's managed to convert people who were aghast at how FFXIII turned out, and they've ended up loving the sequel. By no means was I expecting to ever love the game, but at the very least it could alter my sense of perspective.
Sadly, actually playing through FFXIII-2 has mostly confirmed my suspicions. The battle system has served to remind me of the frustrations I've had with the battle system of the previous game, because every time I watch my characters stupidly move by themselves around the battlefield, often next to each other, so an area effect spell or ability launches them both into the air, I ask: why couldn't the player move the characters around? When my boyfriend saw me playing, he asked the same: "can you not move them?". I've also heard from someone who has the Ultros and Typhon fight DLC purchased how she was only able to win that fight because she was lucky enough to have Typhon's burp attack only hit Noel because Serah had decided to wander off away from the attack range field at the most fortuitous time, allowing her to win the fight by a fingernail.
By and large, the game is well, easy, even on the default difficulty. Goodness knows why it needed a difficulty even lower than the default, because even without the usual grinding routines, FFXIII-2 barely offers a challenge whatsoever. It's possible, unless some poor soul decides to take on the Royal Ripeness the second time, mistaking it for a story quest; or taking on the Long Gui in the Steppe, thinking you have to get past it first to get to the Faeryl behind it, to essentially cruise through most of the battles in the game, stopping only in a couple of occasions when a very occasional and inconsistent spike shows up on the way, such as the Proto-Behemoth. When for most of the game, a battle can end without a Paradigm Shift being necessary, the game designers have done something wrong there. FFXIII actually encouraged a heck of a lot of Paradigm Shifting. FFXIII-2 has problems with balance that it doesn't seem to. Note I have said "MOST". I'm not saying that you can cruise through FFXIII-2 without EVER shifting paradigms unless you are ABSOLUTELY overpowered, and even then...
The way the dialogue options have turned out also confirm my suspicions. I knew they would be purely cosmetic, as a knee-jerk "hey, westerners like Mass Effect, right?" without realising what people like about the Mass Effect dialogue options. They offer choice; FFXIII-2 was not designed to offer genuine choice, no matter how much the development team scrambled to de-linearlise the experience. I didn't realise that at a few points, only one option was right in order to progress, and when they were trying to be funny, only made Serah sound like an idiot. I realise that other JRPGs have done similar things that don't offer any tangible choice or divergence in the narrative whatsoever, but jeez, I remember the Live Trigger in FFXIII-2 being bloody marketed and showcased as a "hey, fans! Look at what you can do now!". I mean, do what exactly? There's no point to these things if you have no idea how it should be integrated into the game.
What I particularly enjoy about RPGs of all kinds and styles, is the world building and the lore. FFXIII did well with the lore, but catastrophically with the former. FFXIII-2 still has plentiful lore, with interesting tidbits here and there about the Paddran civilisation, but they were largely lost in this void of time travel and paradoxes that I couldn't help but find myself disconnected from. I couldn't seem to care about this world I was supposed to save anymore than I cared about Cocoon when its civilians were just unlikeable from all the propaganda and ignorance. I look at areas that are apparently the same, but hundreds of years apart temporally, only to notice the exact same layout with occasional hexagon walls and rocks blocking certain paths, different weather, and different colours. The whole world is a disconnected series of random locations, with multiple different versions of these locations set in random other time periods. It's less of a world and more like a series of monster-infected arenas, broken up only by the occasional casino that doesn't give you all the goods unless you cough up extra for DLC, and certain areas of a map with uninteresting NPCs passing as "towns". Oh, and Academia. I'll be fair. Despite the technical horrors of its frame rate, Academia 4XX AF is the best part of the game.
Here's something I'll say about FFXIII. That game had a clear, rough direction it wanted to go - well, sans the battle system and how exactly it should play; they couldn't even decide how it should play until the demo came out with Advent Children on Blu-Ray. It was Toriyama and Kitase admitting that their strengths laid in linear, tight story-driven experiences, and they wanted FFXIII to reflect this favoured direction of theirs. Sure, my ideal Final Fantasy game, after having played through FFXII, and especially after having played through Xenoblade, is the complete opposite of that, and inevitably I came to see FFXIII as nothing more than a bitter disappointment, but that game had a vision and a direction to head to.
FFXIII-2 doesn't seem to. And dare I say, neither does Lightning Returns. People have said that FFXIII-2 is simply a reactionary product, not a proactive one. FFVII led the way. FFX led the way. FFXII, despite the hate it also gets, also led the way. FFXIII-2 doesn't lead anything. It's a product that is being led, and that's the difference. It was marketed as a reactionary game the moment they assured fans that it will fix the problems of the previous game. After playing it for myself, I'm certain that the people who have labelled it a reactive product are definitely correct in that regard. Of course, they had the best intentions in trying to respond to fan criticisms, and I admire that bit of humility from them, but let's think about this for a bit. Do fans really know what they want? The fanbase isn't even a homogenous entity. The product, conceived to be a reactionary response, suffers in that it lacks its own proper identity as a Final Fantasy game. It suffers in that it simply tries to pursue trends going on in the industry. It suffers in that the developers don't know how these trends should work, and how it should conciliate with some members of the team who have different ideas of what should be done.
As a product, FFXIII-2 isn't a disaster. I think it's mediocre, though serviceable, but that's relative given the state of the JRPG genre this generation. I pretty much expected to get what I received, so I acknowledge that tempered expectations goes a long way. I can't fathom however, what people see in the game when they rate it 10/10, or call it one of the best titles in the franchise - or current gen title even. It does "fix" some of the things that FFXIII was godawful at like actual exploration value (to a degree), but at the same time it does a plethora of things worse than its predecessor. I actually think FFXIII has the better story, and dare I say, the better battle system.
BUT, it's more of what FFXIII-2 represents that leaves the more tangible bitter taste in my mouth. It's another egregious example of Square-Enix dirtying the bed and dropping the ball this generation.
