• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 |OT| Change the Future

Cheska

Member
So glad I decided to watch the livestream. See, I was worried about spoilers, but being that I don't understand a lick of Japanese, I'm having no regrets. Game is beautiful though.
 
Man, watching this is getting me so hyped.

Nice touch, NPCs react accordingly when monsters appear in the vicinity and the system goes to the Moogle Clock.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
Fantastic. That was, surprisingly, my one big gripe about the battle system in FF XIII. That's the change it needed to have proper flow.
Definitely. The long animations and camera pans reduced efficiency and speed. I disliked it a lot. Nice to see an improvement here. Now to see if they made any tweaks or improvements to the system or animations.

Maybe it's because Noel isn't the controlled character, but his animations look... slow.

Also voiced NPC dialogue, yay (ie: when you talk to some of them with "talk" icons on their head, they appear to actually engage in a conversation with Serah). And they react to monsters being there! :O

I do wish the player would set his Opti--Paradigms (>_<) up properly and reorder them if it's possible. Changing to BLA/ATK as a first move in a battle slows things down. :/

Edit:
So essentially, it seems like the Moogle Clock works like an "Auto-Smoke". If successful, you're basically bestowed with buffs and PEs in one fell-swoop. If not, you get nil. Mmm...

If you fail, would the enemies get buffs themselves, or is this wishful thinking on my part?
 

Thoraxes

Member
Also now more confirmed (because of where this streamer is) is the reuse of music from XIII, so it's not only the music on the OST that's in-game.

This was kinda mentioned before, but it's in there nicely.

The track was Separate Paths from XIII.

OMG morrreeeee Lebreau! Yesssssssss.
 

Styles

Member
Also now more confirmed (because of where this streamer is) is the reuse of music from XIII, so it's not only the music on the OST that's in-game.

This was kinda mentioned before, but it's in there nicely.

The track was Separate Paths from XIII.

I love that track. The game looks really good, and it's great to see that leveling up isn't time consuming anymore.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
I hope those formation configurations stay static during battle rather than characters I don't want moving close to each other... moving close to each other.

...This looks better than FFXIII so far in terms of the battle system (I don't think people want narrative spoilers at the moment, but holy crap there's exposition). I'll have to play it for myself to see if I like the changes. The original battle system needed some presentation and fundamental tweaks (ie: I don't like FFXIII's CSB very much; there are other battle/ability systems in the series that I enjoy a lot more (ex: ADB, ATB Kai/Dresspheres, CTB, etc)).

From what I've seen so far, the changes have been for the better, though.

Another FFXIII theme: Promised Eternity
 
And suddenly, after listening to some of the OST and watching a little stream footage, I want this game. D: Really digging (most of!) the soundtrack and the gameplay updates I've seen. I'll try not to keep my hopes too high for the story/characters though, since it doesn't look like a whole lot has changed quality-wise in that department. But man, how I wish it would.
 
There are aggressive mixes for most of the areas that work in a Skies of Arcadia dynamism where it flows from the regular theme into battle seamlessly.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
There are aggressive mixes for most of the areas that work in a Skies of Arcadia dynamism where it flows from the regular theme into battle seamlessly.
Yeah! That's what was crossing my mind and I couldn't put my finger on the game.

I love that the enemies get buffed whenever you fail. Combine that with a Chaos mode (since you can't retry) and we're in business.

Noel's initial cast speed is slow, but then he speeds up. He really might take after Snow or Hope, then.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
I didn't realise Serah was wielding a two-handed sword. That'll slow down her Attacker speed. Noel's initial attack takes time, but it seems like he speeds up between the last two.

...I need to find my stopwatch. This is bugging me. But a stream wouldn't be the best thing to test it on because of lag and stuff.

Er... dumb question regarding the Moogle Clock, but... is it the way that the player is playing it that he's missing the enemy sometimes, or is the control kind of weird for that bit?
 

Thoraxes

Member
I didn't realise Serah was wielding a two-handed sword. That'll slow down her Attacker speed. Noel's initial attack takes time, but it seems like he speeds up between the last two.
Also, both their weapons seem to change with paradigm role too, so maybe it's different per role?
 

Kagari

Crystal Bearer
I didn't realise Serah was wielding a two-handed sword. That'll slow down her Attacker speed. Noel's initial attack takes time, but it seems like he speeds up between the last two.

...I need to find my stopwatch. This is bugging me. But a stream wouldn't be the best thing to test it on because of lag and stuff.

Er... dumb question regarding the Moogle Clock, but... is it the way that the player is playing it that he's missing the enemy sometimes, or is the control kind of weird for that bit?

The camera sometimes gets janky in those parts.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
Did Serah just wipe her forehead while she was running? :O

Oh, he's doing a sidequest.

Also, both their weapons seem to change with paradigm role too, so maybe it's different per role?
I completely missed the Defender one if there was a change, but at this point it seems so.

Bow for Blaster (though it seems like a situational thing because she has a sword in hand for Blaster sometimes--though that's after getting a PE to strike the enemy to near-Stagger; or to use the -strike attacks), two-handed sword for Attacker. I wish they gave her a one-handed sword to make her more flexible and faster. I haven't noticed a change in Noel's stuff, though.

Kagari said:
The camera sometimes gets janky in those parts.
Ugh. I noticed that, but I thought that was the player himself. That's kind of disappointing. :/
 

xion4360

Member
The player is still partly to blame for missing his strikes. He was attempting them hastily and not doing it in the right direction.

He's just wondering on and on now... get on with it!
 

Reveirg

Member
First thoughts on the stream...

-Framerate is a bit off... is that the stream or the game? =/
-FFXIII music is playing. XIII-2's OST is 302 minutes. That makes a LOT of music for one game if there's XIII music coming back!!
-Ambient sound and music cutting off for the Live Trigger choices is really weird...

(oh, and everything else looks AWESOME)
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
He unlocked the
"fought a significant number of battles without using retrying battles"
trophy I believe. Didn't catch the second trophy, though. Seems like those throwaway ones are easy, then... so you don't really have to grind for them like you do in Xillia, lol.

This is a step in the right direction wrt animation.

After Skyward Sword, my expectations for character animations has gone up quite a bit.
 
I'm really enjoying what I'm seeing/hearing so far. Watching the stream actually has me legitimately hyped for this now. (Shame about the stream chat though... >_>)
 

Arklite

Member
So, is the soundtrack that comes with the collector's the FULL soundtrack? As in, not a bundled arrangement that will be rendered incomplete when a stand alone soundtrack release happens?
 

Thoraxes

Member
So, is the soundtrack that comes with the collector's the FULL soundtrack? As in, not a bundled arrangement that will be rendered incomplete when a stand alone soundtrack release happens?

It's 4 discs, like the stand-alone release, so I would assume yes.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
...I didn't like how that boss fight went just because of the superfluous shifting interfering with efficient staggering... :/

I hope that framerate during the
Chocobo bit
is due to the stream because that made me a little dizzy.
 
Top Bottom