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FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 |OT| Change the Future

Cheska

Member
How long is this game relative to the first one? Same? Shorter?

I believe they mentioned it being 30-40 hours, so about the same as XIII,however,the different dialogue choices and options is supposed to entice you to play multiple times.
 
0MmxY.gif

He, obviously, gives a shit. I think he has a valid point. Some of the scenes are awkward if you have a family coming in and out of your room.
 
He, obviously, gives a shit. I think he has a valid point. Some of the scenes are awkward if you have a family coming in and out of your room.

Family knows your hobby, so it's fine. It's mostly the fact that every jRPG has that in abundance (except RoF, that game was excellent in terms of character development). I need to force myself to take story seriously with all the moans and 13-year olds saving the world. Lightning was great as the main character, she at least was mature. Now we get Serah, so it's kinda a step back.
 
I believe they mentioned it being 30-40 hours, so about the same as XIII,however,the different dialogue choices and options is supposed to entice you to play multiple times.
This was asked earlier in the thread but it might have been to early for a good answer, have any of the streams shown meaningful differences in the story from dialog options?
 

Toth

Member
Well some guy rushed through the game in 20 hours and appears to have skipped all the cutscenes. He fought one hell of epic final battle and then got what could only be considered the bad ending (realllllllllllllllllllly bad). Hopefully it's the bad ending. People are freaking out on Gamefaqs because after you get this ending, it says TO BE CONTINUED. You also get:

"New Area Unlocked!"


"TIme Reversal Possible!"


"Item Get!"

So caution: if you rush through the game, you may just get the bad ending.

edit: almost beaten!
 

Midou

Member
Some Japanese have finished the game in 20 hours (easy mode) and there is a serious risk of
FFXIII-3.

Well there was a serious risk of
FFX-3
but luckily it didn't happen. Hopefully SE realizes they should maybe go back to some other habits instead.
 
I'm not ashamed of playing games. It's just that playing FFXIII sometimes sounded like watching porn. All the moaning and grunting, ugh.

the key is for you to start moaning and grunting louder than the game during those parts. It's a distraction tactic. I use it constantly.
 

Zoe

Member
Doesn't have to be. "W" just means warau, which could be either a smile or an audible laugh. :), ^_^;, and even oldschool "<g>" are all valid.

^^; just comes off as sheepish to me, and that doesn't fit the tone of those sentences IMO.
 

Perfo

Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
Some of the scenes are awkward if you have a family coming in and out of your room.

I would be more embarassed if from my room came all the time sounds of shootings or other players yelling online in dolby "fuck you bitch, die, die, die! - HEADSHOT AhAHAHAhAHAHAh!".

Well some guy rushed through the game in 20 hours and appears to have skipped all the cutscenes. He fought one hell of epic final battle and then got what could only be considered the bad ending (realllllllllllllllllllly bad). Hopefully it's the bad ending. People are freaking out on Gamefaqs because after you get this ending, it says TO BE CONTINUED.

What that "TO BE CONTINUED" means? Perhaps a reference to DLCs or sequels? It would be curious to find out if every ending ends up like that.
I hope kagari gets the game soon and starts giving us some concrete opinion on this game :p
 

PK Gaming

Member
Well some guy rushed through the game in 20 hours and appears to have skipped all the cutscenes. He fought one hell of epic final battle and then got what could only be considered the bad ending (realllllllllllllllllllly bad). Hopefully it's the bad ending. People are freaking out on Gamefaqs because after you get this ending, it says TO BE CONTINUED. You also get:

"New Area Unlocked!"


"TIme Reversal Possible!"


"Item Get!"

So caution: if you rush through the game, you may just get the bad ending.

edit: almost beaten!
I'm pretty damn sure its the bad ending, it's just gotta be. SE just slapped its fine in the face if thats not the case!
 

Famassu

Member
Crystarium is still a straight line. They've set it up to look like there's more choice when really it's the same old (terrible) system :(
It's not at all the same. There's a lot more freedom from the start, you are not forced to make your character a certain way, but have some choice in how to develop Serah & Noel. It's not completely changed so it's still a kind of different version of Sphere Grid, but yeah, it gives you some choice instead of just going forward in a straight line with some dead-end side-paths here & there.



And capturing monsters is still really lame.
It could've been, but it seems they've really put effort into it and it really doesn't feel like an afterthought, it's basically deeper than Pokemon (though, with more color palette swaps).
 
Every Crystarium level up you get choices -- adding ATB bars, boosting the power of certain roles, opening up new roles, acquiring certain abilities... it's a much more open and nonlinear Crystarium and everyone will end up with different characters.

The only Crystarium that is linear are monster Crystariums, but you can move abilities that monsters learn over to other monsters, so it becomes very open-ended there, too.
 

I'm an expert

Formerly worldrevolution. The only reason I am nice to anyone else is to avoid being banned.
Man all the Crystarium talk just reminds me how mind-blowing it was to realize 13's was completely the same every playthrough. IMO that was their only real big mistake with 13. I'll go check out the stores this weekend to see how used prices are and if it's anything like the nosedive 13 took.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
*GAME SPOILERS*

Heavy stuff.
Man, I'd explain that one, but I'm not gonna because I don't want to spoil anyone here. That made me lol, though. It was awesome.

I actually came really close to going on P-A and ordering it at that point. Seriously!

But it definitely seems like SE was right... there are
multiple endings, but the player seems to have unlocked the best one!
Bahahahaha!
 

Petrichor

Member
So after trophy inspection, it seems that... *spoilers*
The horrible ending everyone assumed to be a bad ending is actually the "true" ending :(
 

SOLDIER

Member
So is it safe to assume FFXIII-2 will not feature any horrible plot twists in the vein of The Third Birthday?

I'm also wondering if there are any reports that returning characters that you might have hated are now written better. Or at least portrayed to be more likeable.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
So after trophy inspection, it seems that... *spoilers*
The horrible ending everyone assumed to be a bad ending is actually the "true" ending :(
Sounds to me like everyone's been Toriyama'd! Ahahahaha~. Toriyama writing at its finest.

Did the guy check the trophies at the end and unlocked the
Epic Finisher trophy or did it just seem like he was a few steps towards the Anomalous trophy?
I wasn't paying attention to "dings!". I'm studying while watching these, lol.

Because that one looked like an
alternate paradoxical ending
to me. I thought you had to
get all 160 fragments to get the real ending and that guy had less fragments than teakdoc did. Teakdoc's actually going out of his way to get most of the fragments, it seems. Plus didn't the guy get that ending like, 20 hours in? Seems to me like he ended up rushing through it.
But man, if what you say is true and it triggered the trophy, then
that takes some serious balls, lol.
 
Sounds to me like everyone's been Toriyama'd! Ahahahaha~. Toriyama writing at its finest.

Did the guy check the trophies at the end and unlocked the
Epic Finisher trophy or did it just seem like he was a few steps towards the Anomalous trophy?
I wasn't paying attention to "dings!". I'm studying while watching these, lol.

Because that one looked like an
alternate paradoxical ending
to me. I thought you had to
get all 160 fragments to get the real ending and that guy had less fragments than teakdoc did. Teakdoc's actually going out of his way to get most of the fragments, it seems. Plus didn't the guy get that ending like, 20 hours in? Seems to me like he ended up rushing through it.
But man, if what you say is true and it triggered the trophy, then
that takes some serious balls, lol.

I don't think that ending is the true one.
 

chri5t

Member
Wow, so what do the Japanese think about the overall story of the game as compared to FFXIII? Is it a lot worse?

It can't be that much better...
 
I dunno,
the ending has way too much CG animation to not be the True Ending.

He rushed through the game. I imagine the ending you get when you get 100% of the game completed is the real one. We haven't seen that yet.

There's an option to REVERSE it.
 
Quick impressions after spending a few hours with the game last night.

Really dig the musical transitions in the game. Haven't heard any of the truly crazy tracks yet, but on the whole the music seems to work just fine in-game.

The opening is really cool and an exciting way to present a few of the new game mechanics. It makes you feel badass and it's something different from XIII. The first battles you get into as Serah introduce a majority of the system features (save for monsters), which automatically makes the game feel a lot better paced.

The first 'dungeon' is small, but filled with windy paths and people to talk to. This alone creates a very different feel from the beginning of XIII. I actually got lost a couple of times due to getting turned around. That never happened in the previous title.

Story is pretty bat-shit insane. I'm OK with this though. I'd prefer the game go all the way rather than only part way. The conversation choices are also MUCH more frequent than I was expecting and very cool. Really changes the way that dialogue flows. Hopefully it continues to be frequent as the game goes on.

My biggest gripe so far is probably the visuals. It's a good looking game, but it's clearly a step down from XIII. From far away the textures generally look fine, but closeups? Not so much. In particular, the first shot of Serah is a close-up on her body and the textures look pretty iffy. Not a huge issue, but worth mentioning.

I've really enjoyed my time with the game thus far and I'm looking forward to diving back in tonight after I get home from my day job.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
I don't think that ending is the true one.
Yep. Are people flipping out about this ending elsewhere, I wonder?

Does anyone have the original Japanese text of that
Epic Finisher
trophy?
Because it might just be for an ending in the original text.
I haven't seen the original text, but I'll clear that one up if you want.

Edit: nvm, here it is:
&#35211;&#35657;&#20102;&#25925;&#20107;&#32080;&#23616;&#30340;&#35657;&#26126;.
It just says,
"Followed the story to its conclusion/Witnessed the end of the story."
It doesn't necessarily seem like
it's a true ending trophy looking at that text, otherwise it would have said so
. And at the end,
the player was given the ability to go back and reverse time, apparently since I heard the Historia Crux music. So based on that, it looks like all the endings might be done in expensive CG, and not in-engine?

Anyway, I'm not thinking much of the writing in this. The dialogue is really ehhhh... But since I'm finding amusement in the game overall, I think it's better than XIII (which I didn't really care for much since I thought it was pretty boring). It's... a Toriyama story.
 

7Th

Member
He rushed through the game. I imagine the ending you get when you get 100% of the game completed is the real one. We haven't seen that yet.

There's an option to REVERSE it.

I just don't see SE doing that much CG animation for a fake-out ending... unless they did CG animation for all the endings.
 

luka

Loves Robotech S1
Shipped! Can't wait. All this
BAD END
discussion has actually made me more eager to play it.
 
Well there was a serious risk of
FFX-3
but luckily it didn't happen. Hopefully SE realizes they should maybe go back to some other habits instead.

Yea but games cost more. And if they can reuse all these assets for a XIII-3 on PS3/360 they will certainly do it.
 

Zzoram

Member
How many endings are there? Do your dialog choices actually change stuff in the game or does it just change a meaningless response?

Downgrade in visuals? That's disappointing considering they got to re-use so much of FFXIII making this.
 
No. I'm playing the PS3 version. It may very well be my HD TV, but the textures don't look as good to me. Like I said, from normal perspectives/mid-range they look fine. But close-ups in cutscenes etc aren't so great. It's super obvious in the hair too.

I don't think you can really notice a lot of this in the videos/streams though, as I certainly didn't leading up to the release.

It could just be me though. Anyone playing wanna confirm/disagree?
 

DarkChild

Banned
No. I'm playing the PS3 version. It may very well be my HD TV, but the textures don't look as good to me. Like I said, from normal perspectives/mid-range they look fine. But close-ups in cutscenes etc aren't so great. It's super obvious in the hair too.

I don't think you can really notice a lot of this in the videos/streams though, as I certainly didn't leading up to the release.

It could just be me though. Anyone playing wanna confirm/disagree?
Problems with hair is called shimmering caused by alpha-to-coverage and will cause hair to look fuzzy.
 

xion4360

Member
No. I'm playing the PS3 version. It may very well be my HD TV, but the textures don't look as good to me. Like I said, from normal perspectives/mid-range they look fine. But close-ups in cutscenes etc aren't so great. It's super obvious in the hair too.

I don't think you can really notice a lot of this in the videos/streams though, as I certainly didn't leading up to the release.

It could just be me though. Anyone playing wanna confirm/disagree?

You need to play FFXIII, give it a good look. I feel like people are still comparing XIII-2's cutscenes with XIII's pre-recorded ones.

smilex4zz.png

FFXIII-2LightningPNG.jpg


Light's model is the same, they just gave her hair that shiny coat. Other models are generally better - More round less blocky, Animations and effects are better. Its a better looking game once people actually compare it like for like and not in hindsight.
 
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