That time was lost. Yet time continued onwards. Divine Etro. Go peacefully to your rest. I will stand guard over your legacy. This endless realm is awash with sadness. Life and death lose all meaning under the rolling waves of chaos. Valhalla. The currents of time do not touch its shores. In this world of lost moments, I begin my life anew.
Beaten: Once, in 2014
Version played: Xbox 360
I didn't play FFXIII-2 when it came out.
Considering how much I love FFXIII, this sounds pretty weird, right? Surely I wanted to see what happened next. And I did, of course, but... I didn't want to play Serah.
See, I didn't like Serah the first time I played FFXIII. I've since changed my opinion, but I really had no interest in playing through a game about her.
So I let the game sit on the shelf and thought nothing of it until Lightning Returns was due to come out. If I was going to play Lightning again, I had better figure out what the previous game was all about.
Imagine my surprise when I found FFXIII-2 to be an absolute gem of a game. The plot is nonsense, yes. The story beats are bizarre. The entire premise barely follows logically from the first game. But Serah and Noel absolutely carry the absurdity on their shoulders and make for a very compelling tale about time travel and saving the people you love.
Because I didn't play it on release, I had been spoiled for the end of the game by the time I played it. Even so, I genuinely can't believe they went there. It is a wild, bold ending.
I've only played FFXIII-2 once, but it was so much fun to play that I'm desperate for a rerelease on modern consoles.
Favorite character
Lightning remains my favorite in the trilogy, but since she's barely present in this game, let's focus on the leads. Serah absolutely comes into her own in this game, completely rewriting my opinions of her from the first game into a character I adore. All she wants is to get her sister back, and it's incredibly compelling.
Noel, meanwhile, has an absolutely gutting storyline that's wonderful to watch. And of course there's Caius, who's one of the most interesting villains in the franchise. Even when FFXIII-2's plot is absurd, the characters make up for it entirely.
Favorite music
This soundtrack is one of the absolute best in the series. I mean absolute best.
Musically, it's all over the place. There's slow ballads, pop songs, and rap mixed in. There are sweeping orchestral tracks. It's entirely as weird and out there as the game it's from, and I think it's incredible.
Favorite tracks:
- Noel's Theme -Final Journey-
- Full Speed Ahead
- New Bodhum / New Bodhum -Aggressive Mix-
- Paradigm Shift
- Worlds Collide
- The Last Hunter
- Eclipse / Eclipse -Aggressive Mix-
- Song of the Farseers
- Starting Over / Starting Over -Aggressive Mix-
Favorite location
Since this game retreads a lot of the first game, my favorite locations are very similar! I really love the Archytle Steppe, which is even more expansive in this game. I also very much enjoyed the return to Cocoon.
I think my overall favorite is the final area, Academia. Even though I haven't played the game in years, I can still remember wandering around it very clearly.
Gameplay thoughts
As a sequel, it's not a surprise that FFXIII-2 takes the same battle system as its predecessor and refines it.
And man, is it great. The party AI was already very good in FFXIII, but FFXIII-2 adds little touches to make it even more responsive and make the characters do what you want.
The part I don't remember very well is the monster-catching aspect. I definitely remember fighting with monsters on my team, but I don't remember how it fit into the paradigm system, if it did at all. I do know that once I got the particularly strong monsters on my side, the game was something of a steamroll...
I also don't remember much of the time travel aspects of the game — I think there were some puzzles along the way? — but I really liked seeing the environments change depending on what year it was. FFXIII-2 is pretty out there in general, but it knows what it's trying to do, and it largely succeeds.
My one real complaint about the game is the DLC. The battle arena, fine. The Sazh stuff, fine. But the Lightning DLC is the actual ending to the game, and I hate that you had to buy it separately. It sours my taste considerably, even though the DLC was very good.
Further reading
