My experiences with FF XIII-2, inb4 terribad

There's been this debate between me and my coworkers for a while now, about which Final Fantasy is better, 6 or 7.  My friends declare that it must be 6, while I am strongly secure that it is 7 without a doubt.
After a heated debate it really came down to my coworkers telling me that since I had only beaten the game half way, and not actually killed that asshole Kefka, that my opinion was invalid.  After some thought, I agreed.  So I set out on my journey to play and beat the SNES masterpiece, Final Fantasy III, or as we now know it, Final Fantasy VI.  (The following video will answer that debate by the way ;)

 

My experience in Final Fantasy VI isn't the point of this post, maybe some other day I'll talk about that, but along the way I decided that I should finish every Final Fantasy that I hadn't gotten around to.  After beating a few, it was now time to finish XIII-2, a game that had promise from my experiences in the beginning of it.

{SPOILERS FOR FFXIII AND XIII-2 TO FOLLOW}

But you can't really talk about a sequel before saying something about the predecessor.  I was so jacked for Final Fantasy XIII when it came out.  It looked as if it was gonna shrug off all the badness from XI and XII and make an awesome game.  Anyone who watched the trailers was blown away, it looked super futuristic and fresh; the epitome of next gen gaming, or how we perceived it at the time.  There was one video of this guy walking in a full CG background, pretty much saying how amazing Final Fantasy was, and how the second coming of Jesus was nothing more than an opening act for that which was Final Fantasy XIII.  Mega64 made a hilarious parody video.

The game came out, and my friend and I had a marathon night of gaming all ready.  We had heard from early reviews that skeptics had said that the game really doesn't get good until 20 hours in......and they were right.
What a train wreck.  Behind amazing graphics and music was an unlikeable cast of emo college girls (except Snow and Sazh) the worst battle system out of all the FF's, an unnecessarily complex setting and terminology, and an experience more linear than your average Call of Duty (until Gran Pulse, to be fair).
Still, I soldiered on through the melodrama and endless corridors to finish the game.  I was overly thankful to never hear anything about a C'ieth, Fal'cie, or l'cie again.  Still, there were good parts; once the game opened up it wasn't bad, there were a ton of optional bosses to fight, and the ending was good (can't complain when everything is resolved and the 'great sacrifice' is meaningful).  All in all, not a terrible experience, but one I would probably never play again, along the lines of FF XII.

Along comes XIII-2.  My skepticism maxed out, I cautiously downloaded the demo.  To my surprise, it wasn't half bad!  My biggest complaint for XIII was it's boring auto battle system, but it seems they were out to fix that up!  Now during the boss fights there were Quick Time Events to spice it up a bit, and your 3rd party member was something ala Pokemon where you could catch monsters and use them in battle.

So I bought it and started to play it with the hopes of it being a good Final Fantasy game.....why the hell did I do that?  By the end of my experience I was so soured that I was ready to swear off all Final Fantasies forever.  Why?  I'll explain, in mother-fucking-detail.

First, let's talk the battle system.  The game starts off with this AMAZINGLY epic battle between Lightning and Caius Ballad.  Seriously fantastic.  A lot of creative uses of the QTE's and aggressively cinematic.  After getting into the meat of the game though, you start to realize that that's never happening again.  Ever.  Every single boss fight after that follows the same formula of:  Fight boss, beat boss, press 3 buttons for QTE, fight over.  What happens if you fail the QTE?  Nothing.  Either you have to hit him a few more times or he just dies a different way.  How thrilling!  The last boss has a form where the QTE's are pretty decent, but you don't get to skim by with 2 fights in a 40 hour game in my opinion.  The QTE's are garbage.

I was psyched to play with all the monsters and see what kind of creative combinations I could come up with as well.  It didn't really dawn on me until about 15 hours in that my monster class composition looked like this: 

Commando: ~20

Ravager: ~20
Sentinel: 1
Sabateur: ~2
Synergist: ~2
Medic: 1

Now since the battle system in XIII-2 is centered around class roles and not individual abilities....this was a sham.  I seriously didn't find another Medic and Sentinel til about 5 hours until the end of the game.  So I had my team that for the most part, I couldn't switch up at all.  Where's the creativity?  How am I supposed to customize my team with monsters that I can't swap out and a leveling system that you can't customize either?  This made 80% of the game extremely boring and easy, as I powerleveled those certain roles to the max early since there was virtually no wiggle room.  It's shit like this that just perplexes me why they just can't make something simple and fun.  They CHOSE to half ass their battle system to make it look flashier, and by the way, when you have no epic moves to use, it's not flashy at all.
 

How awesome would it be to use a Behemoth?!  Too bad the paradigms don't work for it

Now, let's move onto the (lack of) characters.  Who was allowed to touch the script in this game?  They should be brought to justice and thrown in a Segway fire.  No one, let me repeat that, NO ONE wants to play as Serah.  That's like Kingdom Hearts ditching Sora and having you play as Kairi instead.  She's a weak powerless, uninteresting character.  The very idea that someone as weak as her can become a hero who defeats the most powerful enemies around on a whim is a joke.  I can't wait until that new Steve Bushchemi movie where he punches Mike Tyson through a brick wall, sounds fucking awesome(actually it does....but for a different reason lol).  Not only does it fuck with your suspension of disbelief, but it makes the other characters seem much weaker in comparison (It took 6 of them originally the first time to save the world, but just a super weak girl and her friend can do it by themselves?).

Strongest character in her universe.

By far the biggest problem with the characters is their lack of humanity.  I actually like Noel's character, he has emotions and although sometimes he can be a bit whiny, he comes off as a good 'hero' character.  The problem is almost all with the interactions though.  Let me put this scenario to you:  You are kidnapped and your fiance goes through extreme means to save you.  They save you and also the planet at the same time, and you guys live happily ever after.....for a few years.  One day they say they have to leave for a bullshit cryptic reason and you don't see them for years.  You then go on a quest to find them, and also your missing sibling.  After a harsh journey you finally find them!  What do you do?  Hug them?  Cry as you embrace them?  Tell them how much you miss them?  Well, if you're the writers/developers for Final Fantasy XIII-2, apparently you have them just look at each other and say "I've been looking for you."  No physical contact, no feelings of emotion, just saying 'hey what's up.'  That shit FUCKING KILLS ME.
How can you purposely make characters so emotionally drained?!  How did that GET THROUGH SO MANY PEOPLE?!  Not only does it make that game bad, but it ruins the journey of the original.  I busted my ass through 50 hours of bad game for THAT?!  They don't even fucking care, why should I?  Vaan as a main character was a bad choice for XII, but Serah makes him look like the Dark Knight.
Finally, the story.  It's time travel, and it's bad.  This is time travel where you can ONLY pick certain times, and they are continuous within themselves, unless they use their powers to reset that specific timeline back the beginning.  This means instant swiss cheese plotline.  So they know who's going to assfuck everything and when they're going to do it, why can't they just travel to a different time where you know he'll be and assassinate him?  Oh, because the story is fucking retarded.

The best part is the ending.  Serah fucking dies, and I laughed my ass off in real life when it happened.  Oh no, she didn't die heroically in battle, she just died from being able to see the future; which is never explained why, and barely EVER happens in the game.  Once again, making the journey ENTIRELY POINTLESS from the first game if she's just gonna die for a stupid reason anyway.  It's a bad fucking day when Cliffy B and the devs at Gears of War can make a more powerful death (Dom) than the storytellers at Square.  I don't fucking care about these people or their world, Square has written everything it could in a way to make you not care.  At one point in the future they find out that they've built a futuristic metropolis where everyone is happy.....only so they could decide to rebuild cocoon (i.e. the floating city in the sky) and all live there......fucking why?  Where do they get resources and supplies?  What happens if the power source fails?  What was wrong with the city where the main characters describe it as 'an amazing future to look forward to'? It's insane!  When you as a person can't make a connection to any of the characters or the story, you don't give a shit, and congratulations to Square for making that a monumental achievement in terrible.
In closing, I'd just like to say, don't play this game, ever.  Square has lost their touch with their audience, and their knowledge on how to make good games.  They're just trying to make money back on their art assets with this game and the apparent sequel, which is just another bullshit way to make money rather than good games.  Support games like Last Story, Xenoblade, and any other game where the developers give a shit and are passionate, I guarantee you the game will be better.

 

NEXT TIME: Something way more mellow.

In the meantime, enjoy a meaningful death scene.