Suskie's Final Fantasy XIII-2 review

Maybe in game three we'll finally get a new final fantasy without a warhammer of a story beating you to death. Totally agree with everything you've said here and I haven't even played FFXIII-2. I agree with you on just based on SE's behavior in FFXIII-1.... I mean, for me, this could have been a review on FFXIII-1, minus all the fun exploring.

Great review. It made me laugh even as I hurt inside.

One thing I think you may have meant to write differently, tell me if I'm wrong:

"Did anyone ever complain that FFXIII was too easy?"

I think you meant to say "Did anyone ever complain that FFXIII wasn't easy enough?"

Nice review~

You may be interested to know that at least Final Fantasy Type-0 is a ridiculously good game, one worthy of what the brand used to stand for.

Of course, after a decade of misses, they were bound to have a hit sometime.

I actually don't have a PSP. Though I wonder how cheap they'll be now that Vita's arriving? Type-0 does look pretty fantastic.

Thanks for the comments. Good correction, Zipp.

Great stuff. Still somewhat curious to play it, but now I'm thinking bargain bin prices. I can wait.

Hey, quick question. The alternate ending stuff seems to send my mind images of Chrono Triggers fun endings (which actually made a weird sort of sense, based on the time travel events and when you choose to beat the game). How does it pan out in FFXIII-2? Anything interesting or just more shit?

It is actually a bit like Chrono Trigger, except most of them can only be unlocked with an item you get after completing the main game, so you'll have to actually go back and replay certain bits, which is easy to do but kinda tedious. A lot of them are dumb, but the one relating to Atlas (which you unlock by defeating with without first weakening him with the nearby device) is actually pretty cool.

Here's the line that made me realize I was going to really enjoy reading this review (and I did):

I’ve devoted 60 hours of my life to finding value in Final Fantasy XIII-2

//Zig

Great review. Pretty much decided to skip this game on the basis of the demo and a hilarious commentary on the first 10 minutes or so I saw on Youtube. Seems it was the right decision.

Excellent review, Mike!

I'm trying to pinpoint when and where Square went wrong. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like they try too hard to be relevant. They were awesome back in the mid-90s to early 2000s, but it's like they went downhill as their fanbase grew...as if they were trying to draw many different audiences to one product.

Honestly, I think the problem with Square/FF is that they seem to want to overhaul the battle system/gameplay in every single game, but their storytelling has dwindled to a combination of over-the-top dramatics and the same sort of generic JRPG cliche characters they've been running in some form for ages where you have the stoic, antisocial one; the boisterous enthusiastic one; the token teen boy; etc. teaming up to fight the "evil empire".

Joe, I think their demise happened when they merged with Enix, but I think their problems really started with The Spirits Within. They lost a lot of money, and so they started doing sequels with short development times to create a low cost game that would sell madly.

And a high budget game would just be big cinematic scenes that get more and more ridiculous, and ridiculous stories to match them.

I've never played an FF with deeply written characters or down to earth narratives. Just sayin.

btw, very fun read, suskie.

Thanks for the comments, everyone. I really appreciate it.

My long-standing issue with this series is that it's not really a "series" at all. The only thing the Final Fantasy games ever collectively represented was a consistent level of quality that other JRPGs strove to equal, and I think most of us can agree that those days are well behind us. I'm not a Final Fantasy expert, but not only does SE clearly not know what to do with this brand, they've been consistently letting fans down.

Which is why I said that we need to stop giving this franchise more respect than it deserves. "Final Fantasy" doesn't mean anything anymore.

Isn't it a bit of an exaggeration to say they don't know what they're doing? Sure, if we go around the boards of the internet, Square Enix is by far one of the most despised developers out there. I mean, nothing they make is considered remotely playable these days. But they're pulling huge numbers, and anyone telling them to stop their current strategy of breaking into new markets would be kindly shown the door of the conference room.

What's most interesting to me is that nearly all the discussion around the destruction of Square revolves around their more financially successful projects (X-2, XII, XIII, XIII-2, etc...). But no one seems to talk about one of the biggest bombs in MMO history -- Final Fantasy XIV. That's why they're hurting, really, and if anything XIII-2 is helping them dig out of a huge hole. They've been remaking that MMO under the cover of free to play for a goddamn year now, it only recently went back up for subscription. A block buster MMO and a year without income?

It doesn't get as much coverage because it's an MMO, and it's disconnected from the rage of the fanbase. It doesn't rub the wounds as deeply as the main installments do, right? Oh that FF MMO thing, yeah who cares about that?

Unless we're talking strictly from a non-business standpoint. I apologize for the tangent if that was the case.

I'm not talking from a business standpoint, merely stating an opinion. I think it's different niches or types of people who have different views on Square. Some people still like their products, and that's fine. There are some of us, though, who aren't impressed. Then there are some who buy the new FF game, play it for a week or so, stop playing it, wind up selling or trading it, and never really give their two cents on the matter.

I've never played an FF with deeply written characters or down to earth narratives. Just sayin.

True, but there have been plenty that had much better characters than the recent ones. For me, it's not the depth of the characters that matters, it's whether or not they're interesting. And I don't think a character has to be literary-canon deep to be interesting. I tend to lose interest if I don't like the characters, and many J-RPGs today like to overload on annoying characters.

I think my problem of late (with J-RPGs in general and not just Square, to be fair) is that developers have rehashed the same character types to the point that they all run together for me. I can't differentiate one stoic older character from another; same goes with spastic teenage girls who may or may not be ninjas, big breasted women with loads of battle experience, overly eager teenage protagonists, and whiny spiky-haired swordsmen. I've enjoyed plenty of games with these characters in the past, but nowadays they feel like painful cliches.

Bear in mind that none of this reflects my thoughts on Final Fantasy XIII-2, because I have yet to play it (or XIII-1, for that matter). Whether or not I'll like either of these games or the characters therein remains to be seen.

And yeah, fuck FFXIV!

EDIT:
Oops, forgot the X!

Good points, sorry for misunderstanding the previous argument. I never played FFs for the literary depth either, just for a colorful cast of characters and a fun story. I don't think XIII will change your mind on their current direction though, haha.

"And yeah, fuck FFXIV!"

That's all I wanted =]

I have recently gone back and played FFVI and it still works, so definitely something is different from before. But then, that was an ENTIRELY different team of game developers. That was back in the days of the dream team, which included Nobuo Uematsu as composer, Yoshitaka Amano as art director (and he is an artist before he is a character designer, which I think is important), and Yoshinori Kitase, who had a goddamn degree in cinematic story telling (that's not a joke, he really does), and Hironobu Sakaguchi as writer.

Maybe the most important thing about this team was that they had been together since FF1. That's a lot of time to get all the bugs worked out and to strengthen your compatibility with each other. People are all over the place when it comes to opinion on FFVII-FFXII, but one thing I've noticed that stands out about FFXIII is that it is the first Final Fantasy where everyone is either working in a new capacity or with someone they haven't before.

Might mean something.

Holdthephone, I'm not questioning the Final Fantasy franchise's ability to make money. But I can tell that SE actually does have some semblance of a desire to make their fans happy in addition to taking their money, and... well, I wouldn't say they're clueless, but this is exactly what I meant when I said that Final Fantasy isn't a "series." It didn't always matter. In the SNES days, when you bought a Final Fantasy title, you knew what you were getting into and you knew it would be really good, even if it had no relation to the last game in the franchise apart from its title. Nowadays, when a game has "Final Fantasy" on the box, what does that tell you about the game? Absolutely nothing. The last FF game to be universally regarded as great came out over a decade ago, and since then we've gotten two MMOs, one with a real-time battle system, and one that abandons so many JRPG tropes that it barely fits into the genre. The FF name sells well by default, but why should it?

And for the record, I didn't mention FFXIV because there are few things in this world that I care about less than MMOs. At the risk of sounding dismissive.

I'll agree with you on the name not meaning anything anymore. Well, it basically translates to "big RPG by square, yellow birds included." And that's how I look at each one these days.

Great review, Suskie. I agree about the writing especially. So much of it was mind numbingly idiotic. By the way, how did you insert an image at the top of your review?

If you go into the game's profile and click "View Assets," you'll see the image, as well as the appropriate HTML. Thanks for reading, by the way!

Just got around to reading this. It's now my favourite Suskie review.

Thanks, EmP. Really pleases me to see so much positive feedback on this review.