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FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 |OT| Change the Future

Perfo

Perfo

Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
I'm one of the rare players that liked XIII's story quite a lot. While the writing is nothing to talk about, the general story, the ideas behind it, the way is told and unfold, the concept around Cocoon and Pulse, the mithology ect. all grew on me. I actually cared for the protagonists' destiny and the world they lived in. There's an aura of "fantasy and mistery" I didn't see in previous titles. I also especially liked the way the story was told, with flashbacks, moving forward, and back again in time. It leaves the player with questions about "what's next", and that's I think is a big merit for an entertaining product like this. This plus an extremely good art direction, made FFXIII's world one really charming for me. Because of this, I actually think I'll enjoy alot XIII-2 hearing that some of the characters are pretty interesting and finally it seems we got a menacing "nemesis" to fight, something that XIII and general many FFs lacked in the last years.

Oh, I also want to comment on the difficulty: I found XIII quite challenging in the story, and very challenging in the missions. You couldn't cheat like in every other FFs by levelling your characters and then going back. This part I think is lost in the sequel, but I hope few battles are challenging enough.
 
R

Relix

he's Virgin Tight™
I am in Gran Pulse in FFXIII... should I finish that goddamned game? :p! I kinda want to play this one but seeing as... hmm.. XIII is soulless I don't know haha.
 
K

Kagari

Crystal Bearer
desu said:
Man getting the last fragments is really a pain in the ass. Can't wait until it's finished...
Click to expand...

I finished getting the last wild ooparts... now to get the rest of the fragments. Btw, where is the second l'cie corpse in Bilge Ruins AF005? I can't find it...
 
D

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
My friend finished this today with 32 hours 16 minutes. He did quite a few of the sidequests, mucked around in Augusta Tower longer than he should have, and filled out his bestiary a little bit (on my suggestion since I knew he'd try to 100% this game anyway). I guess part of the time went to trying to platform in the final dungeon + encountering monsters. And maybe grinding? He said he had difficulties with the final boss, but the other enemies in the game didn't really give him a lot of trouble.

He disliked the ending a lot, but he's trying to figure out what he thought about the story because the ending confused him a little. I guess he's feeling disappointed, since he really enjoyed FFXIII's narrative, and much of the cast. Hm. He's going to try to get all of the fragments now.

He thinks Noel is pretty cool. Much better than Snow (from the way he was saying this, it seems like he's trying to induce shipping wars; (I guess this is quarter/midgame spoilers)
he thoroughly enjoyed the scene where Noel and Snow bickered for a while, ex: "Let's hear why he left you behind and ran off!", and also the scene where Noel just rips into Snow for trying to be the HERO when they return to save him
). He doesn't really like Serah as a leader much at the beginning, just because
she didn't seem to get the point about time travel at the beginning of the game (ie: "she asks too many dumb questions or says dumb things")
. He also did not appreciate
the lack of Lightning, or not even being able to use her past the first battle--in that regard, he felt the game let him down in that area since Lightning was one of his favourites
. FFXIII-2 Hope is far superior to FFXIII Hope. He doesn't moan and groan, and he seems like he's there to get things done. He's matured.

He knows I like looking at character animations in terms of idling/battle/conversation, etc, so he let me know that when Noel (as the party leader) is having a conversation with an NPC or something, if there's a chair nearby, Serah'll sit down and look attentive. If Serah is the party leader and she has a conversation with an NPC, Noel just walks around. :lol

The most unfortunate thing he said to me was that he didn't really play with the monster system much outside of levelling them up (rather than combining two monsters to make a stronger one) because he didn't feel like he really needed to. Hm.

Overall, he's a bit disappointed, since he really liked FFXIII, and this wasn't what he expected in terms of the ending. He does like that they added a bunch of new stuff for the player to do like gambling (even though the card game is sealed off), and extra sidequests, but in terms of the story (ie: in terms of being a continuation of FFXIII's arc, character development and world-rebuilding), he was disappointed he didn't get a few of the answers he wanted. He was playing this moreso for the story than the battle system/gameplay additions, really.

Oh, and he thought the "So far in Final Fantasy XIII-2..." from the various voice actors were pretty neat.
 
SkylineRKR

SkylineRKR

Member
Dark Schala said:
And that's the way it should be. People should formulate their own opinion by sampling the game. If they're unsure, rent.

I guess it's rather unfortunate that SE isn't putting a demo up on PSN/XBLA for this. It would probably help people decide.


The Guis were probably the hardest enemies out of all of those due to their unpredictability (ex: every battle with them followed a certain formula, but 75% of the time, they did not adhere to this formula). The mission enemies and the boss enemies were much easier in comparison since you needed Defenders to reduce damage if you're using the most standard of strategies. The Bart battles aren't really difficult if you have Defenders put into place at the right times and are ATB-cancelling/buffing at a good rate.

Regardless, the battle system finally became fun to play with when you were formulating alternate strategies for the mission battles that neglected using the Defender job a lot. Fighting Atticus without a Defender there at all times was fuuuuuuuuun, for example. That's probably my favourite battle in the entire game. :D


That's true. I wonder if it would have been worse if she had gotten the 100% extra ending scene, though. :lol
Click to expand...

I loved the battles in FFXIII, I platinumed the game and beat Gui's for the sake of it. Even when fully maxed you could always lose a battle, thats true. There also wasn't a real way to farm ridiculous amounts of money in a short time, and the Death exploit was very annoying and far from foul proof. I think the game itself was rather balanced in that regard.

The mission ratings were kind of fucked up though, al you had to do was equipping your maxed out team with crap tier 1 weapons to have loads of time for a 5 star win.
 
D

Deleted member 20920

Unconfirmed Member
Not sure whether it has been said but for those getting the fragment for enemy report, you don't need to get their full data, just an entry for every monster.
 
D

drtomoe123

Member
I've only now started reading up about this game considering that we're starting to get grounded impressions in, and I'm still pretty hyped about this game (have the collector's edition pre-ordered on Amazon).

I've had some streams on in the background and I'm really digging the OST.
 
A

AMoreHumbleSquare

Banned
ffseriesdebut.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]

*Oh wrong thread*
 
D

desu

Member
entrydenied said:
Not sure whether it has been said but for those getting the fragment for enemy report, you don't need to get their full data, just an entry for every monster.
Click to expand...

That's good to know, its one of the last we are missing right now. And I already spent a lot of time on getting the complete info.
 
I

InternHertz

Member
Perfo said:
That's quite alot of hrs compared to others, did you do alot of extras before closing it?
Click to expand...

I did take some time looking for wild ooparts, fragments and most importantly, every gate.

But now I'm at almost 52 hours and I'm trying to get the last things I need...I still don't know if I'm going for an all-around 100% or not, but I'm at least getting all trophies (that'll already take some time and also some luck for the casino trophy :/).
So maybe I won't have all monsters captured, nor a lot of chocobo races won, nor all decorations, nor every "V" in the entire enemy report, all because I'll have other things to do after this.

Oh that reminds me, did someone get the Casino coins trophy? How much do you need to get at slot machines for the trophy to pop up? I saw that most of the "a lot" trophies are in fact easily obtainable but this is so based on luck it's not even funny (even though I suspect the game is rigging them when you only press L1 for autoplay - I saw a lot of the same pattern after a while...).
I think the "spend a lot of gil at shops" was something like 100.000 gil spent before it popped up, so maybe I'll only need to get 100.000 coins at the slot machines too? :p
 
RPGCrazied

RPGCrazied

Member
Even after all the fragments, the ending still ends on a cliffhanger?

Well, at least its from a big developer with funds. If it was a smaller one, a sequel probably wouldn't get made.
 
D

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
InternHertz said:
I saw that most of the "a lot" trophies are in fact easily obtainable but this is so based on luck it's not even funny (even though I suspect the game is rigging them when you only press L1 for autoplay - I saw a lot of the same pattern after a while...).
Click to expand...
Speaking of trophies, how are you gauging the trophy difficulty/time-consuming nature of this game compared to FFXIII and Tales of Xillia (I bring Xillia up just because the trophies had the same vague "obtain a lot of X" or "use Y a lot" trophies)?

entrydenied said:
Not sure whether it has been said but for those getting the fragment for enemy report, you don't need to get their full data, just an entry for every monster.
Click to expand...
Aw shit, really? :lol

My friend has been trying to get the full data (incl. drop info) for a few days now. So you don't need all of the data like status effect immunity or elemental resistance info too?

SkylineRKR said:
The mission ratings were kind of fucked up though, al you had to do was equipping your maxed out team with crap tier 1 weapons to have loads of time for a 5 star win.
Click to expand...
My friends always thought it was a bit of a mystery how I got the L'Cie Paragon trophy with only Tier-1 weapons even though I stressed that doing it this way is much easier on the player. :lol Also, yes... trying to win with spamming Death is boring, boring, boring.
 
M

Mengetsu

Member
Sound Track wise which songs are the boss battle song and regular battle songs in this game i would really like to hear what everyone else is hearing cause I love my FF music.
 
R

Rahxephon91

Banned
XIII's Japanese sales were pretty great. But I guess context dosent show in graphs.

I'm also not sure how that graph shows how gamers vote with their wallets. Did gamers want more teen angst in 9?
 
Zoe

Zoe

Member
I think I have around 120 fragments... Haven't beaten the game yet except for the easiest Paradox ending. Enemies in the last stage were kicking my ass hard, so I decided to do side stuff as I grind :(
 
ULTROS!

ULTROS!

People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
Do you have to replay the entire game to get those trophies?

Oh and are you platinuming the game? :p
 
F

FlutterPuffs

Member
Rahxephon91 said:
Most of the negative talk is from people I don't share opinions with anyway and other then the game being easy, I'im not hearing much bad. Then again being easy dosent nesccairly mean bad and most FF's already easy. XIII was easy, but the fun came form killing the enemys as quickly as possible, so if that's still there, there's no problem. Either way, I'm going to buy the game and make up my own opinion.
Click to expand...

I remember the last time I had that mindset, and it was due to the bad reception White Knight Chronicles got. Most of us actually went "Nah, American reviewers don't appreciate RPGs, they don't understand all those are part of the fun."

And then I got my hands on the game. I was so close to cracking the CD in half after finishing it.

Anyway dude, I'm sure it'll be fun. But don't deny the criticisms too much. Denying it will only inflate your expectations for the game more, and oh will it hurt once you get your hands on it.

Sometimes keeping some expectations low helps.
 
I

InternHertz

Member
Dark Schala said:
Speaking of trophies, how are you gauging the trophy difficulty/time-consuming nature of this game compared to FFXIII and Tales of Xillia (I bring Xillia up just because the trophies had the same vague "obtain a lot of X" or "use Y a lot" trophies)?
Click to expand...

it's a lot more quicker than Xillia that's for sure, in XIII-2 you unlock a lot of them very early, I think I only need the casino coins but it's only because you can spend an hour on it for absolutely nothing. I hate luck trophies -_- and even more when it's clearly rigged.

For the other trophies well it's easier or at least quicker than XIII for the most part, the big problem being getting all fragments. It's the only real time-consuming one because it implies doing almost all the other trophies ^^;
I'm at 154 myself, still need
2 big monsters, 2 paradox endings, 1 luck coin, "complete" enemy report
 
N

Nista

Member
This thread is actually reassuring for me. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to finish 13-2 by the time Reckoning came out a week later. Crisis averted!

Though admittedly I am a bit sad to hear about the decreased difficulty and lack of necessary battle strategy.
 
L

Let me in

Member
bobbytkc said:
FF13-2 is the slowest launching final fantasy in 17 years. Ouch.

Good luck with 13-3 Square Enix.
Click to expand...
I'll be interested to see the next few weeks, but I think they misread the market/feedback. People were less disenchanted with the gameplay systems and more with the story/characters (i.e. not interested in revisiting that world).

(but many publishers would kill for those kinds of numbers. relativity etc. etc.)
 
Alex

Alex

Member
Not really following the game, but glossing the OST there's this big budget orchestra Naoshi Mizuta song and that made me happy. Sounds really good, always liked that guy and it's cool to see him spreading his wings on this.
 
A

AMoreHumbleSquare

Banned
bobbytkc said:
FF13-2 is the slowest launching final fantasy in 17 years. Ouch.

Good luck with 13-3 Square Enix.
Click to expand...

True it beat V, also a Christmas release. lol We haven't established a good formula for projecting famitsu's point system b/f '94 and since the GAF now frowns upon point projections I excluded it.

By my estimates FFV debuted at 475,000 (30,685 points) [first day btw] and exploded during X'mas~NY that year and went on to be the first FF to break 2 mill. Those days are sure gone.
 
T

The Praiseworthy

Member
Kagari said:
I find it absolutely hilarious how SE mislead people with XIII-2... Lightning is only playable ONCE in the entire game. She doesn't appear again until 20 hours later in a cutscene, and then from then on, only in cutscenes. Toriyama successfully trolled everyone.
Click to expand...

It didn't work on me... because I know SE so well, very classy of them.
 
F

Famassu

Member
bobbytkc said:
FF13-2 is the slowest launching final fantasy in 17 years. Ouch.

Good luck with 13-3 Square Enix.
Click to expand...
I don't think it's that big of a deal for the series in the long run. Considering Final Fantasy X was a well-liked FF in Japan, yet X-2 still did noticeably worse. XIII isn't nearly as liked and didn't sell nearly as much as X, so it's no surprise that a sequel would have a bigger drop. It's still not a complete financial flop, given the short development time & recycled assets. I guess the real question will be what kind of numbers XIII-2 will pull outside Japan.
 
J

Jarmel

Banned
Famassu said:
I don't think it's that big of a deal for the series in the long run. Considering Final Fantasy X was a well-liked FF in Japan, yet X-2 still did noticeably worse. XIII isn't nearly as liked and didn't sell nearly as much as X, so it's no surprise that a sequel would have a bigger drop. It's still not a complete financial flop, given the short development time & recycled assets. I guess the real question will be what kind of numbers XIII-2 will pull outside Japan.
Click to expand...

It's going to depend on the reviews but it definitely isn't going to pull in amazing numbers.
 
D

desu

Member
Finally done with all fragments ...

The fragment skills youw get are pretty funny, especially the one let's you play the game with 2x speed.
 
ULTROS!

ULTROS!

People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
Famassu said:
I don't think it's that big of a deal for the series in the long run. Considering Final Fantasy X was a well-liked FF in Japan, yet X-2 still did noticeably worse. XIII isn't nearly as liked and didn't sell nearly as much as X, so it's no surprise that a sequel would have a bigger drop. It's still not a complete financial flop, given the short development time & recycled assets. I guess the real question will be what kind of numbers XIII-2 will pull outside Japan.
Click to expand...

From what I see, FFXIII-2 is more of a "cheaply made, recycled FFXIII by using its thrown out/incomplete assets" as compared to FFX. Dunno but that's just me.
 
F

Famassu

Member
ULTROS! said:
From what I see, FFXIII-2 is more of a "cheaply made, recycled FFXIII by using its thrown out/incomplete assets" as compared to FFX. Dunno but that's just me.
Click to expand...
Which is different from X-2 being a cheaply made, recycled X how?

Pretty sure they aren't using any of the unused stuff from XIII. I've gotten the impression that those were mostly just them cutting parts of dungeons (that they felt were too long) as well as not using some story-related environments, like the outside area of Lightning's house, because they ended up scrapping storylines related to them. Others were mostly just in concept stage (they had maybe some drawings that were never taken any further in development).
 
G

Gilgamesh

Member
Alex said:
Not really following the game, but glossing the OST there's this big budget orchestra Naoshi Mizuta song and that made me happy. Sounds really good, always liked that guy and it's cool to see him spreading his wings on this.
Click to expand...

Respect to that, brotha. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Mizuta had a large portion of the soundtrack. I'd figured it would be mostly Hamauzu with a few filler songs from the other composers.
 
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