Without a doubt this is worthy of a main FF game number. If it had different characters they could have named it FF 15. Do yourself a favor and buy this game, play it, and judge for yourself. I loved XIII very much, however many griped about the linear story line...well part 2 is far from linear. I am glad that SE listened to their fans and made adjustments. Enjoy it and happy playing.

FInal Fantasy used to be the pinnacle of 'next generation' videogame during the PS 1 era.....but something along the way was lost...Square Soft seemed to lose their connection with their own customers. I remember back in the PS1 days, Square was the best game developer there is...Every game that they made were gold, even outside FF! Yes, FF 13 part 1 and 2 looks amazing, but it feels 'awkward'. They're not immersive...You don't get sucked into the worlds as you used to. There's too much cut scenes. Better yet, learn from the best JRPG of last year, XENOBLADE Chronicles. For now, FF feels like a shadow of its former self… Expand

Is it me, or are the vast majority of the top 10 most helpful reviews written in broken English? I wonder if SE pulled a Bioware and pushed their employees to create accounts for the sake of bringing up the user score. Yes, I'm being ridiculous, but I'm not joking about the poor English. Take a look for yourself. As for the game, I couldn't even endure the demo. I've tried to give it a chance (3 to be exact) but I would always end up quitting, mostly due to boredom. I've tried playing the game with and without auto-battle to see if it made a difference but to no avail. Even if you manually input the actions, with such a limited amount of abilities, you end up performing identical or similar move sets. So it seems like the more time efficient method is to select auto-battle. There's also paradigm shifting, but really, it just hot swaps your class. It doesn't make the game any more interesting, varied, or challenging. My impressions of the story were not positive. I'm not a fan of the two main leads. Having recently found out that these two are the only human (playable) main characters in the game I was immediately turned off. For every terrible FF character in recent games, there were usually a handful of other more decent characters to focus your attention on. This game doesn't offer you that luxury and if it was their intention to have you focus on these two characters, they should have taken better care to ensure that their personalities had more depth. Instead, they are bland as bland can be. Completely forgettable. The story segments I experienced were laughably bad. Pretentious, cryptic dialogue returns to give you a sense that the FF13 universe believes its own depth. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the game doesn't have a clue what its talking about at times, or that could be an instance of poor translation/writing. Apparently, the story for the full game is not as strong as previous titles so I take it my impressions were not far off the mark. What's worse, this game will sell. People will eat this game up because it's Final Fantasy. That's what bothers me. This game would have been acceptable in 2007, when showing off a systems graphical potential was fresh, but this is 2012. Many recent game releases already exhibit amazing graphical capabilities for severely dated consoles. Graphics are no longer a selling point, but a standard. And while this game does look and sound pretty, it doesn't bring anything else new to the table and it barely refines the source material it has to work with. It's a shame, because the artists and sound designers/musicians could be working on much better projects as opposed to being reduced to another 'phoned in' Final Fantasy title. Also, the old fans of Final Fantasy will not just 'move on'. We are the reason why the series got as far as it did in the first place. True fans give praise where it is due and critique on things that are either flawed or dated. They don't just say to themselves "WELL HURP DERP! It's Final Fantasy and made by Square Enix. Therefore, whatever they make I'll have to love and treasure without question". That may be why things got as bad as they are now. I don't know for sure. What I do know is that I was a fan of Final Fantasy and I'm not anymore. The series had its ups and downs, but now I only see downs. With every bold step forward (ff12) comes a cautious step back (ff13 and ff14). I really do hope that the fan base starts to take a hard look at the obvious decline in the quality of SE's recent games and take appropriate action. That is, unless you're perfectly content with slop and mediocrity.… Expand

I played this game. i haven't finished it, and i don't intend to. The first 30 minutes of this game are just cut scenes, you can hardly do anything. Heres a list of things i liked: (1)Now you can switch party members(2) The music is ok, not the best FF soundtrack, but better than most games Things I disliked: (3)The towns are joke. You can hardly enter any house and theres hardly any NPCs in them (4) Dialogue is bad and cheesy (5) The battle system is the same, you can still win most battles using libra and auto battle (6) What FF game only lets you control 2 characters? This game does (7) Still no world map, when willSE add the world map back? Conclusion: If you play FF solely because of the gameplay (be warned this game is easy as hell), and side quests, and don’t care for the story (this game has a light story in my opinion). Then right here is the perfect game waiting for someone like you ! But not me…… Expand

Wow, this game is truly incredible. After reading so many contrasting things it was hard to know what to expect but all I can say is that this game just has that "FF charm" to it. From the rich battle mechanics (just flip off auto-battle, folks. they DO give you that option), to the underrated emotional subtlety (granted, you won't find it until near the end, but its there) this title is finally a step back in the right direction for square. If you're unsure about this title just do yourself a favor and make up your OWN mind instead of letting all the little the numbers taint it: just take the plunge and enjoy!… Expand

What's wrong with a game has a direct sequence (even if it is more a) if it is a wonderful game? What's wrong with the story complete trilogy format, or quatrolgogia or quintologia? A wonderful game can not escape the conclusion to his story ends it in an upcoming episode? Why require a "middle chapter" finish the story of the game?

Remember when a new FF game was the talk of the town, a sounding call for all kids to rush to the nearest store and cast their vote prematurely for game of the year? Those days are gone. But FF XIII-2 is an okay game anyway. Better, in fact, than the last eight years of Square Enix's attempts to "update" (or ruin) their games. It won't escape from the scrutiny the series has received constantly in these years, and a lot of that has to do with the wooden characters. I actually remember when the cast of FF evoked real emotion, and didn't just play off their own stereotypes (the silent cool one, the broody one, the airhead "funny" one). Serah and Noel are just about the worst the series has offered, not helped by the terrible dialogue and the contrived plot, which isn't even worth mocking. So what worked? Well, the battle system and difficulty curve are much better implemented than its predecessor. The game smartly ripped off "pokemon" and "chrono trigger" with the monster collection system and time travel world-altering mechanics. In doing so, the game up and admits that "Final Fantasy" as a unique franchise has died, and square enix doesn't know what it's doing any more. Things like the world map, large cast of interchangeable-but-unique-in-battle characters, rebels against the evil empire distracted by clever side quests... it's all gone for good it seems. Yes, there are side quests, but they boil down to WOW style fetch quests. There are towns of unique NPCs but, since you always know where to go next, there's no motivation to explore these side characters and their trials against killing some specific monster type you've already battled a hundred times. And saving the world? I guess you do... accidentally, as a sort of means to an end of finding that broody Cloud/Cecil build that was Lightning. Yes, this is a return to form for the franchise, and the game feels a bit more like old school JRPG fun. At this point, there are better JRPGs to play, with cleverer plots in place of those frame-rate-destroying HD graphics. Try "Cthulu Saves the World" instead. Hell, even the Pokemon franchise is better than this. But it's a hell of a lot more involving than the last few FF games, and at least the series seems to be getting off the ropes. Here's hoping "Versus" or the yet-to-be-announced FF 15 will be better.… Expand

Funny that almost all animes use and abuse of the To Be Continued, FF seems already prohibited from using it. There are chapters and more chapters of Dragon Ball Z for example, that are pure **** surpassing even the novels of Globo and Televisa.

While vain haters saying that the series died on 8, at 9, 10, 6 ... in the game celebrates 25 years with much success, having sold until the thirteenth time about 7 million copies, and XIII-2, they lost some public in Japan, making this much success in the U.S., and pre-sales with 150 000 units more than its predecessor.

Outdated Everything. Story doesn't make any sense. Annoying voice acting. Combat still unimaginative, the game plays by itself, just flashy battles. How about some real fighting. Not here. Square Enix is just milking the fanbase. The fanbase of neckbeards that like little girls with pink hair.

This game is a masterpiece like the classic Final Fantasys. The gameplay, the music, the characters, the ambience, the graphics, etc Everything is awesome. If you like good games. If you like FFXIII. If you like Final Fantasy saga. Buy It! Buy it right now. It's a masterpiece.

Where are the masters of these fans of "to be continue" to criticize the decision of Square Enix? They criticize everything the company does, how DLCs. Every game company today make five hundred DLCs and nobody says anything, and when the Square do ...

Everyone has the right not to like Final Fantasy CURRENT. But when you call it "garbage" and said the series "Died," the millions of fans today, feel the least offended. Ai comes respect.

People just need to understand that things change, and as part of the public old leaves, comes a new audience (this includes even lower sales in Japan and higher in the West). Things are new Resident Evil ... went through it, leaving aside the terror and taking action. Final Fantasy follows changing, losing and gaining fans with each new episode, and it is not like those who no longer accept this fact, and at least respect the tastes of others, and as we said, not rate it "junk" as seen by both there.… Expand

Final Fantasy fans have their real needs and not those that have been, but today only know how to criticize. You are a leading zero to Square Enix! Sorry, but this is the truth. Recalling that the Square already registered the name Final Fantasy XIII-3.

If you didn't have an issue with XIII then you'll probably enjoy this game. If you took issue with XIII then the nominal improvements won't fix it enough. It would be advisable to rent or barrow the game first before committing to a purchase.

I play RPGs primarily for the story, characters, and the cinematic experience, which is why I am so disenchanted by FF13-2. The story literally does not make any sense, and I feel as though the game finds that fact funny and flaunts it very often. The majority of the conversations in the game have nothing to do with relevant characters or events--they're unnatural, nonsensical rants about "time" and "paradox", over and over and over and over. It's as if the writers believed that if they repeated those words enough, things would start to make sense. They don't. The characters--and there's only two--act as if no one else is there with them. Noel and Serah don't connect at all--they just state things over the course of the game, as if the other isn't there. They go through the entire game without learning much about one another. It's similar to the way, for example, Fang never interacted with anyone but Vanille in FF13. It's very awkward and, to be honest, lonely. But most of the game is lonely; though FF13-2 boasts that towns have returned, they really haven't. Sure, many of the time periods in the game have "towns", but they are just town-looking locations overrun with monsters. Why should I care about saving a town from monsters if the town has no NPCs or interiors of any kind? I don't even know who lives here, or if anyone ever does live here. Sure, you'll see futuristic cars zooming by in the background, but it's a huge disappointment when you realize that you'll never be able to actually talk to anyone from many of the time periods. Don't get excited by the term "time periods"--in 13-2, most of them are just one-level dungeons. My other complaint is the way the developers approached "fixing" the game after FF13. Most of the non-linearity is artificial: Maps are now "gridded", but every twist and turn leads to the same goal. There's not actually anything interesting to see off the beaten path, other than a treasure sphere. The minigames of 13-2 are also totally unrelated to what is going on in the story--they're clearly just thrown in to address 13's lack of minigames. And the towns, as I mentioned, continue to be disappointing ghost towns that constantly make me wonder why this world is worth saving at all when no one lives in it. For me, the meat of an RPG is the story and characters, and that's why I'm giving this game a 3/10. The 3 represents the great graphics, the above average music, the "cool" factor of the game, the CG, the battle system, and all of the other bells and whistles. If you like Pokemon, or want a grinding game, give 13-2 a shot. If you're after for an epic story experience, look elsewhere.… Expand

Too many ones pushin'up this thing. This game is dull as a rusted dishwater in the center of a living-room. Characters ? Silly, charismatic as a toilet. Gameplay ? Chaotic. For a non English-birth-language ones ergonomy is non-existent cause you're forced to read on the bottom of the screen a lot of things that drive away focus completely from everything. Leveling up ? Just too linear. Actions ? Too fast too many times (we are not lab-monkeys) == frustrating. Shops ? That addicted neither-too-sexy thing it's a cheap choice for programmers. Level design ? Built by the machine. Atmosphere ? Zero. Sounds ? Annoying. Musics ? Someone good but out of place and no adrenaline rush. Graphics ? Last chapter was better. The story ? What story ? That mess that someone call a "story" ? Who cares ? ...I'm a bigbetterhuge FF fan, I've always been... but this time is just too much, enough is enough, please FF staff, just go to do HARAKIRI, not FF XIII-3, shame on you, regain "love for the game" instead "love for the money" and money will come again but this time I only wish you to default.… Expand

FFXIII-3 doesn't look like a true FF game to me, it just proves that the series is dead. No longer is it Final FANTASY, is just post modern crap that has forgetten its roots. And its made by hack Nomura, one of the biggest reasons why the series has died (taking the series into an anime direction with his artwork that isfar inferior to Amano's). The series is dead. It may not be a corpse lying in a grave, but its a zombie that just won't lie down. The further the series has gone, the further away from its roots it has gone, the messier and more cliched the storytelling has gotten, the more style over substance it has gotten, and the need to have a more cinematic experience instead of solid gameplay has grown. Never mind the fact that the creator of the series has left after FFX, and now have a bunch of hacks writing and designing the series.… Expand

The CEO Square Enix Yoichi Wada and the CEO of Bic Camera, Hiroyuki Miyajima continued with speeches short. Wada noted that XIII -2 has been enhanced to overcome the XIII in all aspects. Miyajima said the pre-sales for the game were strong in your store, and expressed hope that they sell more copies than anywhere in Japan.

A huge step up from Final Fantasy XIII with more attention to exploration, minigames, and some improvements to combat. The story can get a bit confusing at times so I knocked off a point for clarity, though overall it's a decent improvement. I always dislike people who give games a 0 in ratings, that means it is UNPLAYABLE, such as too many bugs and crashes. If you want to try that type of game look at Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim at launch or Fallout 3: New Vegas.… Expand

Yep.. It's the real deal this time around! ~Game is VERY good and "feels" like a final fantasy game through and through. ~Combat is extremely fluid, fast, and fun! ~Collecting the enemies you fight to aid subsequent encounters is nothing short of epic! ~Within the first hour of the game your riding Chocobos for crying out lout! Awesome. ~By only having 2 main characters the story this time around is ALOT more focused albeit a little less dire but still an overall good story that I'm very much enjoying! ~ Time travel mechanic is done in a very accessible way and fun to do instead of being a huge pain in the kiester. Did you like FFX?? BUT THIS GAME! Did you like FF13?? BUY THIS GAME! Did you like FF9?? BUY THIS GAME!… Expand

What can I say about this wonderfull game? better than the original in almost every single way...better than the original in almost every single way, I wanna XIII-3 now!!!!!!!!!!!

As we have reported in recent weeks, the newest RPG from Square Enix, Final Fantasy XIII-2 continues to surprise in pre-sales in the U.S.. Unlike Japan, where sales were not as good as its predecessor, the American territory, the game has surpassed more than 100 000 units Final Fantasy XIII on the same date, and that only the PS3 version, adding about 354 000 copies sold . In the Xbox 360 version, the game enters the top 10 with 115,000 units.… Expand

Joguei a versao japonesa e posso dizer que foi o melhor jogo da minha vida! Claro que a historia nao se conclui, mas nao vejo mal algum em termos FFXIII-3. Estou ancioso ja para saber o que ocorre em seguida.

I stopped playing at 12 hours of game-play, couldn't take it anymore. The game is depressing and everything is emo to the extreme. The story is just bad. The only improvement over ff13 is the combat system, which is than gimped by only having 2 characters! There hasn't been a good final fantasy game since the PS1 era. How can a company that creates a masterpiece like FFVII publish this trash? Did they all become twilight fans?… Expand

Not gonna write an extensive review but the game is fun and well made but it isn't complete since you will need to buy DLC to access certain features in the game and also you need to wait and buy more DLC to finish the story too. Basically this would of been a great game if it was finshed

While Final Fantasy 13-2 will still not be everyone's cup of tea it is far superior to its predecessor. Final Fantasy 13-2 mostly sticks to the same battle system utilised by its predecessor, however it is different enough to make it feel a lot more fun. Combat is much faster and more fluid on the whole, the paradigm shifts have no slow down as exhibited in 13 and the game in general is more about enduring the battle than a dungeon (Same as in 13 in this way). Speaking of endurance in battle 13-2 brings in the 'wound' system which makes enduring battles harder as some enemies caan wound you and make your maximum lifebar lower and lower, therefore making just healing injuries slightly more obselete. Now the next new thing in the combat system is rather hit and miss with its implementation, 'Cinematic Actions' or QTE are used at various points in battle. While the mention of QTE within a JRPG may sound ludicrous I personally found it to further expand on the fast system and add a nice layer of depth to the battle system, rather than just using auto-battle or using the paradigm shift most of the time. The gameplay is enjoyable and really thought through by Square Enix this time around most will enjoy it albeit those who thoroughly disliked the initial system in 13. Another important point to take into consideration which is new to the final fantasy series is the addition of monsters which round up the count of your party members to three. During your travels through the game you will encounter various monsters, some of which turn into a crystal and join your party during the duration of the game. There are a few main types of monsters each with their own unique job assigned (which cannot be changed through paradigm shift) for example you may put a Behemoth on your party who fulfils the commando role. Before battle however you must set your paradigms, which includes setting a specific monster to each, so that when you activate a battle during a paradigm shift the type of monster can be changed. An example of this is say you have a team of Serah (RAV), Noel (Rav) and Zwerg Scanaroid(RAV) but you want 2 Medics and a commando you could paradigm shift so the monster appropriate to this condition is within that paradigm Serah (MED) Noel (COM) Cait Sith (MED). Again within battle the monsters have a Limit Break like technique called a 'Feral Link' which can be used during battle to use a special attack which is unique to each monster, However the feral link bar must first be filled. Finally we move onto the actual equipment and levelling up system. This time around we ditch the previous crystarium system in which everything was on a set stemmed path and take up the new crystarium system, which using crystogen points received for winning battles allow for upgrades of each job seperately until you reach a bonus. Once a bonus is reached the player decides what to do with the bonus, common options include; Upgrade job bonuses (Get more HP etc... for each step taken on crystarium scale), Unlock a new job which was previously locked to the character, increase ATB gauges. This system feels much more comfortable and a lot less confused than the levelling up system that was included in the predecessor. To level up monsters the system is essentially the same except your limited to levelling up their specified job and instead of using crystogen points to level up they use special items. Next up is equipment which is mostly the same except for the fact that A) Weapons no longer have to be upgraded) and B) Accessories take up a set amount of AP for each character which can be raised by choosing this as a bonus within the levelling up system. Now away from all this technical stuff is the need to say that the linear paths seen within 13 are mostly gone and the open areas within the game definately allow for exploration to find new items or to find fragments and artifacts (More on this later). The enviroments are diverse in general although the first few are all pretty dull in the sense that they are ruins, although this is intentional as they are mostly the same location in different time zones (More on this later). NPC's are also back and really give a feeling of life in the game, they also offer up side missions which are really useful to carry out. There is also a feature commonly seen in MMO of a tab at the bottom left of the screen which has all the text of what the NPC's are currently communicating. Then there is a new system called the 'Live trigger' system which allows you to talk to NPC's in a new branching conversation and decisions way (As seen in Mass Effect). There are also new systems like the Historia Crux which allows travel to various locations within the game provided you have the key to going to these locations in the form of an artifact which can be found. Would write more but got no characters left. Gameplay: 9 Graphics:8.5 Presentation:9 Lasting Appeal:9 Story: 7.5… Expand

I love this game. With the beautifully flowing graphics to the iridescent cut scenes that seem magical. The story line is involved as much as it should be for such a game. The music is more varied than its predecessor and amusing in some instances (Chocobo riding is suitably silly). I am happy with the characters and can see that the developers were mindful of creatures such as Moogle becoming overwhelming. I enjoy the new battle style that employs Monsters and the Live and Cinematic action is a real treat. For the haters that give this game a zero, I question why they purchased it (if at all). If you didn't like FF13 then why play FF13-2? Your negative comments are not helpful in the slightest. Your opinions are trite to the point of being amusing. Please feel free to not buy any more installments of this game. At least we won't have to sift through your boorish reviews with zeros attached. I, however, will continue to support this franchise till the end of time.... around 700AF.… Expand

There's no surprise that this game has a low user score, this will be mainly due to butt hurt fanboys who are still holding out for their precious FFVII remake (lol), the people that will think they can review this game based on what they played in a demo, and also the people who just have a blind hatred for anything FF because they're too busy circle jerking all over their screens while they play COD. Personally I've had the game for a few days and enjoy it immensely, if you have a brain and can actually make decisions for yourself then do yourself a favor and just play the game before you decide to judge it.… Expand

Complex game with a simplistic aproach... Downright fun, reminds me of a blend of ffx ff9 and ff7 which aöso happens to be my favorite games of all time, i liked ffxiii but i LOVE this game, it's FUN and you can go where your mood is whether it's casino or side-quests or chocobo training or main story and so forth...

this game is amazing. i **** hate ign prick **** they are way to critical. wtf happened to appreciating good rpg games? now everything has to be a certain way!? BS this game gets a 10.

When I saw all these trailers I gotta say I was confident with this game. But then I heard THAT song, the chocobo song (which is the most aweful music I've heard in a game since Terminator on the Nes, and that sounded bad). But you're thinking one thing right : "This is just music... c'mon!" And yeah, this is just one boring song between a lot of good music. First of all, what's the problem with the name ? They're doing the number thing again. FF X-2 was a bad name and also a bad game. So what about THIS one, is it also a bad name ? Yes. But is it a bad game ? Well... yes again. And what about the rest of the game, well... it's kinda like FFXIII "The First". The game is short just like the first one and there aren't so much side quests. In one hour of gameplay you will only PLAY for like 20 minutes maximum (yeah too much cutscenes, with bad acting). Also once again we can call this game Final Fantasy Hallway #2. This game is sooo frustrating, I've never seen such a game and that's the problem. I really can hardly call this Final Frustration a game. And that's how I'll be talking of the lame fighting system. Which is the same one as before, that I will call "Press the X button". HOT DAMN! You can finish the game with pressing the same button over and over and over and over and over again. It's a good thing if you're playing a beat'em all game (like Streets of Rage or Final Fight). If they wanted to make an action game they should have done it, why Square? WHYYYYYY? But yeah so people like it beacause it looks cool and yeah kinda I guess... And here we are, THE ONLY GOOD thing about this game! It looks good and when I mean good, it's looking good. On the playstation 3 (and 360) and might one of the finest looking games. It's not the same style as Uncharted for example but Final Fantasy 13.2 is gorgeous. You know Final Fantasy always looked good, even the first ones (at least for the time) but looking good is not the most important thing, we need actual gameplay. I think Square has killed off one the of their biggest franchise, one of the best J-RPG franchise. Too bad... Square sealed the coffin with the last nail and killed Final Fantasy just like Neversoft killed Guitar Hero or like Treyarch killed Call of Duty. We're doomed!… Expand

I am enjoying this game thoroughly, and would recommend it to any fan of RPGs looking for a new game to play. The combat system is the same but improved with new options to keep you occupied, the new Chrono Trigger-esque style of play is awesome, in my opinion, and while the early game has a lot of cutscenes, it doesn't amount to nearly what had to be endured in FFXIII. I think a lot of negative reveiws I've seen so far are "I played 30 minutes" or " I didn't play this at all, but Final Fantasy is long dead since 9!!!!!" and those aren't fair reviews or comparisons. If you don't want to pay to rent it, then download the free demo and try it out! I enjoy the combat system, which is, to me, an updated version of the Star Ocean battle system, as your allies will fight for you. I would hardly say that it is auto-pilot -- without user interaction and thought even simple encounters would end in a Game Over. I also enjoy the new grid sphere-esque system, and encounter system. I will say that the music can grind the gears and can't be turned off without muting everything! This is kind of crappy, but overall a minor complaint. Do yourself a favor, play the demo!… Expand

I liked Final Fantasy XIII unlike most people. Regardless i saw the issues that ruined it as a final fantasy game for most people. This game, however, certainly fixes most of those issues, such as the lack of mini games, side quests, and exploration. While, the areas you can explore aren't all that huge, the whole different era mechanic makes exploration fun with all the different side quests and what not. Combat is also a lot more exciting with the mog clock and the cinematic action which takes quick time events a step up and lot more fun. There's also a few more RPG factors with the live triggers which allow you to choose what you say. The characters, however, are still a little boring with little relatability or true motivation. Despite that the game is still fun to play with an interesting world with fun game mechanics.… Expand

Ultimately this game does nothing for the franchise that was driven into the ground. While not as **** as its predecessor, FFXIII-2 is still bland and boring in every possible way (except the graphics of course - those are beautiful). Characters are as annoying as ever; the story is a cliche storm, though typical for any JRPG; the music - well, let's just say that I've never thought that any soundtrack could be more bland and unmemorable than that of FFXIII. Guess SquareEnix proved me wrong. I'm very happy that I will be able to spend these 60$ on something good instead. Too bad for my friend who spent his on this.… Expand

Fantastic entry to the Final Fantasy series. Gameplay = Combat retains it's faced paced action from the original and adding a few extra tweaks to make it interesting. The new puzzles may be a little brick in the road, but at least it takes the ease away. Environment = Beautiful once again throughout the game, less linearity, more opportunities to explore and amazing art designs. Replay Value = Tons of replay value for those interested in seeing there favourite characters back in action once again or even fighting against one of the more interesting villains, Caius. Voice work = The cast is amazing and does an excellent job to keep things entertaining. Liam O'brien does a great job as Caius. Overall this game deserves a little more credit, those that are"True" fans of Final Fantasy will love this, no doubt. Those new to the series are even welcome to it a whirl and it may even "capture" the old fans once again. 9.5/10… Expand

This game improves on virtually every single aspect from it's predecessor. How it's getting lower reviews, I can't figure out but if you read almost every outlets review you will realize this game is good, not just good, but much better than FFXIII. In fact, I believe this game is how FFXIII should have been in the first place.

I've already played a much better time traveling game that has an actual story, an amazing soundtrack and some of the best characters ever in an RPG and that game is..Chrono Trigger. FFXIII-2 gets 1 point for their CG cutscenes, 1 point for the strictly ok battle system, and 1 point for the ok non rap, non metal, non j-pop music. I've played FF1, FF2, FF4, FF6, FF7, FF8, FF9, FF10, FF10-2, FF12, FF13 and FF13-2. The truth is, FFXIII-2 is the worst Final Fantasy game ever created, with FFX-2 coming in 2nd. I wouldn't even bother renting this. As I finish typing this, I'm getting ready to drop it off at the post office. I just want to say thank you to gamefly for saving some $$ for me… Expand

awesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesome

It's better than FFXIII that's a huge plus and it adds more variety of game like Chocobo Racing, Solving Puzzles, there's much more fun in this game than in previous one, so if your'e a fan of Final Fantasy you sure will love it.

This game is so much better than 13. It captures what made Final Fantasy great in the first place. People who say the battle system is weak are fools. All you did in games like FF7 was click attack and choose target, with the occasional spell and healing item. It's the same sort of thing. It has a great (different) soundtrack, excellent characters(better than 13 in every way). The story picks up where 13 left off, and continues it with grace and charm, unexpected in FF sequels. If you are actually a fan of Final Fantasy (not the kids on here who say everything after 8 was bad) then pick it up. It's definitely worth the money.… Expand

Don't listen to the people who haven't played the game or given it a zero, it actually runs, its a fine game and some interesting concepts. If they complete the story via dlc or expansion that would bump it up to a 9 for me.

This game fixed literally everything from the previous installment as well as implement a somewhat coherent story with time travel. The only thing that really hinders me from loving it is the wide open ending.

I have played all the final fantasy games and FF13-2 is definitely just as great as all the games before it. I have played 3 hours into it and I can't find a flaw yet. The combat is excellent and is fast paced just like 13 and u have to actually think on the harder battles. FF7 is so old school now and outdated I don't why people like it so much I thought it was average and nothing special I don't no why people bother comparing to any final fantasy games. If u want a good final fantasy game that has good replay value and a great follow up story get FF13-2, if u want a be a hater and live in the past and complain about **** instead of being a final fantasy fan ignore this game.… Expand

First of all, I didn't like 13 that much. It took me half a year to finish because it was so boring to play. Mind you, I speak what I experienced. What's up with all these 10s and 0s with troll reviews anyway. There are so many fan boys and haters swarming metacritic to rate this game -_- That aside: It's actually a good, fresh experience to play. Just because it's not the ff people grew up with, doesn't mean it's bad. So many people butthurt. Anyway, I've finished the game. Graphics are still good. Music is beautiful. Eclipse(Aggressive), Wish, and Noel's theme became my favs. The latter half of the game touched me. The characters suddenly developed as well. Although many say the story is nonsense, I clearly know what's going on and why it's going on though I was confused at first. The main villain did well on his part; he's actually memorable compared to other villains. The side characters and the goddess also served to bolster the plot. It all became clear at the end. And this story reminds me of a film noir with melodrama. This installment got me hooked on the final fantasy series again. I would give this game a 9/10, but there are so many troll 0 reviews that ruin the image of it. I recommend this game to others wanting a good rpg. It's a fresh experience that broke some rules. SE is quite bold to do so well and risking the series with the story of 13-2, although some aspects were tried in the past. 10/10. More people should experience this.… Expand

A disapointing attempt at fixing the wrongs of the previous game; Final Fantasy XIII-2 is average in every sense of the word, there are very few areas in which the game truly shines. Note this was written based on approx 30 hours of gameplay. Final Fantasy XIII-2's story is a blabbering mess. Very similar to XIII in which the 2 (2!!) main characters have zero motivation for the first 7 hours, and the relationship development between the two is very sparse and unenjoyable to experience. The dialogue feels like it was written by monkeys on typewriters; get used to hearing the words paradox over and over and over. Every single problem in the story is reduced down to "A paradox done it". Serah and Noel feel incredibly detached from each other and often simply repeat what the other has said like they were in seperate rooms at the time. Minigames are a little bit different to those of other Final Fantasy games, they are quite frequent, for example in Academia there are a set of quizzes. The quizzes are incredibly frustrating, I'm constantly being asked questions that are almost impossible to know the answer for. Trial and error is not a good way to get these answers when you have to get 8 other questions in order to get to that particular one. Serendipity is NOT the Gold Saucer, it's almost just a game corner in Pokemon. Slots and Chocobo racing are about it, the rest you're going to have to shell out more money to buy as DLC. Oh and don't expect a world map, expect a glorified level select. Time travel in this game is done incredibly badly too. Don't ever go in thinking Chrono Trigger style, you're actions in previous era's have almost no effect on other era's, a technique Square had mastered years ago. As said before time travel is not even a good way to describe the Historia Crux, it is just a level select in which 30% are original area's. The rest are reskins or recycled. That's the sad truth. The gameplay is still unimaginative and restrictive. I can only control one character at a time, use auto-battle and paradigm shift and that's about it. The monster catching system is incredibly grinding and gives you access to 3 less paradigms. That restricts you even more. Even on normal difficulty the game is exceptionally easy. There is litterally no more to add it is so similar to XIII. The soundtrack for XIII-2 is terrible, the main battle theme is the only theme I enjoyed but.. a heavy metal chocobo theme, really? Gameplay=subpar, story=subpar and characters=subpar. The three things that matter in Final Fantasy and all of them are just terrible. Definitely avoid. Vote with your money and don't let Square Enix cash in on a terrible game like this.… Expand

well, i havent played 13-2 yet, and ive only played 13, but this is what i think, lol, the weaknesses in 13 came mostly from the fact that square didnt stay ps3 exclusive, they could have had a game that was twice as big on a single disc, a game like FF needs playstation hardware, plus it would benefit the Playstation cuz exclusive games keep people buying and supporting systems. As far as XIII-2 my fear is that they still have limited space, so they are just going to try to cram in the things that people compained about without having the feedom to really put there heart into anything. i respect square and think they are doping the best they can, i just think that they should just do what they really want to do in creating a game, just keep it Ps3 exclusive, unless xbox doesnt mind releasing the game on at least 6 discs, lol, but i dont think thats good for munny. if they do this they will make it easier to execute what they want. and remember its their hardcore playstation fanbase that made them so successful, who cares about expanding to xbox, not if its gonna hold back making good games. i will admit though, i think in 13 they did the best thing by at least having great characters and story. btw ff7 rules all other ff, just wanted to throw that out there.… Expand

The Game Sucks but I'm a SweatShopBot payed by Squenix so I ma rate it a glowing 10er ;) enjoy the Finalfantasy so much better than 7, for real exploration true colour hair so pink, most Toriyama wish I also have. Together we can difference these Fans don't know the true Final Fantsies in my heart will never forget. So much fun. After hanging around with Cloud Strife helping the village Chocobo this music never left me with XIII-2 I overly satisfied. Can anyone blame so good game? :P… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Time travel? Chocobos? Moogles? Chocobo races? Amazing interactive combat system? Interactive cutscenes? Dialogue options? Excellent graphics? A fun story? Do you like these things? Then you'll like Final Fantasy XIII-2. They throw in everything you love about the Final Fantasy games and have made it sharper, cleaner, and better. Want to tame monsters and make them a part of your party? Do it! This game is amazing and well worth anyone's time! Even if you've never played a Final Fantasy game before. It even gives you a recap if you don't want to play FFXIII first. You might miss out on some story, but it gives you enough to let you get what's going on!… Expand

****Remember folks: If you truly are as hardcore FF fans as you say you are, there's no point in whining about the auto-battle system; it's optional! You can still manually choose ALL the abilities you want to use.**** FFXIII-2 does wonders to the series after the small disappointment that XIII was. Don't get me wrong, XIII was a good game and for the first 30 hours of the game I ate it up like strawberry ice cream on a hot summer day. However after that it got a bit repetitive and in the end when I finished the game it didn't invoke much feeling. However XIII-2 is a different beast. The linearity is gone, the battle system has been made even more fluid and it even offers you to change the default position of the cursor so it's faster to handle battles manually. The music in the game is not the best Final Fantasy has to offer, but you can still expect to hear some tunes that will get you excited or emotional. Writing is cheesy as is usual in Japanese entertainment and Final Fantasy in particular, and this is made even worse by the English voice actors who just quite can't deliver (I can't imagine how annoying it must be to record all these cheesy lines). This wasn't a big problem when the series was text based, but with voices it's a different story. I would prefer to have Japanese voice with English subtitles but since they lip-sync it it becomes difficult. If you want to play the game with Japanese voice and English subtitles you can buy this version in Play-Asia. The small additions, like the "cinematic action", real time CGI, monster gathering and leveling and minigames like the paradoxes and side quests really make this game shine.… Expand

To me it seems that when it comes to Final Fantasy 13 and Final Fantasy 13-2, that the votes are split, half of the people giving it a 10, and half of the people giving it a 0. And I am definitely not going to give this game a 10. Let me start off by saying I love every Final Fantasy from 1-7 and I can even enjoy 8, 9, and 10, given I am in the right mood. But I bought Final Fantasy 13 thinking it was going to be another great entry in the series, what I got was a game that held your hand and showed you all of the pretty little things it made. Extremely disappointed, I was not planning on buying this one. But I have played it, gotten somewhat far, and cannot bear myself to go any further. For the record, this game IS better than Final Fantasy 13, but that is a pretty low bar in the first place. Oh, and yeah, I am also one of the many people who despise this new auto battle system. I suppose I'll just start listing the problems I had with it. The story is downright bad, the characters are either annoying or just plain whiny, the music don't get me wrong is good, but none of it is memorable and just sounds so uninspired, and yeah, the battle system is horrendously repetitive, and just outright bad. If there was one good thing to say about this game, it would be that the graphics are top notch, and the animators obviously spent a lot of time working on them. But to me, it all just feels so shallow, as if the game is one of the new transformers movies. It just holds your hand, and shows you all of the cool fighting scenes it has. And what it all comes down to is just the fact that this game, like it or not, is not a very good game, especially using Final Fantasy standards. Oh, and yeah I know, the main argument out right now is that the series needs to change it's battle system or else it will get tired and boring, and I DO agree with that! One of my favorite Final Fantasy games was Final Fantasy Crisis Core for the PSP, and that wasn't even turned based! I whole heartily agree that the series needs to change, Final Fantasy 13 just made all of the wrong changes. Oh yeah, and I get why people are defending this game, I really do. You liked the story and don't want anyone to tell you wrong, I get it! Final Fantasy games have that impression on people, you just need to realize that this is not a very good game, and even if it does improve from the last installment, it still is a disgrace to what once was a great game series.… Expand

I was a little worried when this game was announced, i was mad because this was coming out before Versus xiii, however i was extremely pleased when started playing , everything XIII was, XIII-2 did it better. After getting a bit of course with the first one i can say with confidence SE is on track, hoping versus will be even better

Not what I expected... in a bad way. I'm writing this review assuming that the reader has played the original to an extent. The game starts out well, but eventually turns into an overall mess as you get farther into the story. The original was so fun to me because of the long engaging story, great characters, and fast and difficult combat. All of these are pretty much missing in the second series. The story is pretty much a huge failure and didn't hold my interest for a second. I won't give any specific details on what the story is, but let's just say it is not the kind of story I expect from Square Enix. There's a problem that threatens the world, and the characters travel from place to place trying to fix it. That is about all there is to the story. I suppose that's what happens when you try to incorporate an open ended world into an RPG. The characters were so bland that it makes me depressed just watching them talk. If they were only going to give us two characters, at least make them somewhat interesting! One character just goes along with the flow while the other character tries to take the lead but is dumb as a rock. The way the game flows does not satisfy me either. It feels almost tedious to play through the game. I feel like there is no way to do the sidequests without a walkthrough because the quest objectives are so vague, and most of them don't show you where the objective is, leaving you to explore the map over and over again only to find that what you were looking for was in the corner that you accidentally skipped over. There is no way to gauge the difficulty of the side quest you are doing, so sometimes you will end up having side quests that are designed for extremely high leveled characters, while you are only a couple hours into the game. I don't know how many hours I've wasted trying to kill unbeatable monsters. Even part of the main story frustrates me. Having to travel back to all the places I've been before just to pick up an invisible item that takes forever to find is not good game design. I really do appreciate the fact that there are side quests to go to unlike in the original, but it feels like everything I do is a side quest, and I really don't like that feeling. I am at the moment struggling to find motivation to continue with the main story, even though I am on the second to last chapter. All this wouldn't be so bad though if the combat and leveling was fun. Unfortunately though, this game falls short on that aspect too. The leveling system makes it very hard to switch from one playstyle to another if you want to change up your party. Thus, you will probably be using one set of paradigms throughout the whole game, which isn't fun. Raising monsters seemed like a neat idea at first, but I really wish they just put another character in the monster's slot instead. It suffers the same problem as leveling your characters, as it takes a ludicrous amount of resources and grinding to make a monster powerful. The combat is pretty much exactly the same as in the original, but the enemy designs and the way character development pans out pretty much ruins everything. One of the reasons FFXIII was fun was because it was necessary to use every advantage you can possibly gain to defeat your current enemy. It was fun to attempt fitting in synergist buffs with the intense damage that your medic has to heal through, while also trying to keep the enemy chain gauge up. It was fun to adjust to different situations, and having to adjust your entire playstyle for different fights. FFXIII-2 absolutely destroys this. There is no longer a need to adjust to a situation, or to rush to stagger an enemy. There is only a need to have high damage and survive burst damage, which involves a lot of switching to sentinel. The chain gauge can wait. Wound damage would have been a new interesting mechanic, which involves lowering your maximum HP as a fight wears on over time from tougher enemies, but the game provides wound potions for a fairly cheap price, which makes me wonder why they put in wound damage in at all. The game ranges from way too hard to way too easy. There is not an in between. If you try to proceed through the main story without any sidequests at all, you will end up getting your monkey spanked until bananas come out of your ears, but if you do just a couple sidequests, you will end up facerolling any enemies that come your way for all eternity, due to the fact that the game relies so much on just surviving a set amount of burst damage. Overall, I'm pretty much utterly disappointed with this game, but the community kind of brought it on themselves. They whined and whined for a more open world, and Square Enix indeed delivered. Unfortunately, the game just didn't end up being as fun as I thought it would be. It's not an absolutely terrible game though. It's just absolutely terrible for what Square Enix is capable of. I cannot recommend buying this game for it's full price.… Expand

I Enjoyed myself with this game. But there were too many things that were a so disappointing. The game was way too easy. The battle system is great, but not when the game is too easy. The story is well....Why are we doing this, why is this happening. It's not explained or its poorly told. Serah and Noel aren't much fun, and with a party of only 2 (two!) people there isn't much party interaction at all. And the Arena I was so looking forward to when this was opening up. Post game it was still closed. Guess what it's DLC! And many other minor things. I had fun playing it, but this games goes for the disappointment of 2012.… Expand

Sometimes we see prominent, successful, people have children only for that child to grow up and be unable to emerge from the shadow of their parents. That, unfortunately, describes the case with this title. Final Fantasy XIII-2 is the child of Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger but fails to emerge from the shadow of either. The characters are shallow and hard to connect with, the time aspects of the story aren't very well done and makes the story more confusing than it needs to be, and the combat system - with exception to the inclusion of monster mobs in your party - has changed little from FF13. The one good change has been the ability to change party leaders, especially during combat, because in FF13 the defeat of your party leader was an instant game over - a complaint sounded by many players. Unfortunately the game is ultimately mediocre - just another Final Fantasy title that doesn't really stand out. It's really a shame Sakaguchi wasn''t able to be successful with Mistwalker Studios; I feel had Square Enix had some real competition from their former mastermind, the quality of Final Fantasy would have significantly increased.… Expand

The new FF is simply great ! Ok,the story is stretched and functional satisfying but the game also improved in many ways.

* Yes this review will be pretty harsh, but in the end i will give some constructive feedback about how i think the series still can be saved. * (I'm dutch so please forgive my English.) Final Fantasy has lost it's soul, it is now nothing more than a pretty empty shell. It is merely a glimpse of the big bright beautiful star it once was. I really h... i mean... dislike the 3d engine, i dislike the characters, i dislike the story, which makes no sense at all, i dislike the combat system, i dislike the music. (My favourite song of all time, still is Cosmo Canyon from VII, when i first heard it, it gave me goosebumps from head to toe, i still have this song now, for even more then a decade in my regular mp3 play list, and it never gets old.) But since X the magic is completely gone. Final Fantasy has lost the spirit of adventure, and the spirit of exploration, everything that made Final Fantasy 1-10 great is sadly enough, completely gone. It is now a game for the masses, and dumbed down for a greater audience, for only one stinkin reason...money. The only way of which i can think off, to restore the former glory of the series, and i think a lot of people will agree with me, but of course the new Final Fantasy playing generation will not, is this: Drop the new 3d engine they are using, and create a new HD engine of the same engine they used for VII, VIII, IX. Please bring back the turn based battle system, i truly love it, i like to think out my strategy during a fight, i also like to take my time during a fight, and don't want to be rushed ALL the time. Even tough technology nowadays can easily render the world map in 3d, as were they started with in XII, please don't !, and create a top down view like they did in the "real" Final Fantasy games, this because it brings variety, due to the different perspectives you get, when playing the game. So when in buildings, towns, villages, use 3d view, when on the world map, use top down view, and when in battle, once again the 3d view, or like... how do you say it, the view like it was in VII, VIII, IX, but make the battles turn based again. And please bring back the Aeons / GF's in their traditional form, and do not make them able to fight by your side, but only on summon bases. (I like to watch my Aeon / Gf's introduction for 2 minutes every single time i summon them :-D (This is also where the engine can really shine like it did in VII, VIII, IX) Like in VIII when you would summon Eden, it took a whole lot of time, and in the mean time i got really pumped up and started to yell at my tv saying things like; ooow now your gonna get it (Eden's animation still running and charging.) Saying again; ITS ON NOW (Eden's animation almost finished :P) Saying oww yeah it's coming now B****ES !!... And then after a minute or so Eden released it's Fury, whipping most of the baddies out, after which i put my sweaty hands back on my PS 1 controller, those where the days i tell you ! :-) And then the music, make it more adventure spirited, more magical, and traditional, like in the old days. Also make an option to turn voice overs on or off, and when in off mode use text balloons, this might be a strange request for most people, but when "voices" are given to you, your imagination has nothing to do any more because they are filled in all ready, i like to give them their own voices, and personality in my head. to me, it has this extra dimension. So, an option for voice overs on or off, and off course an option for using Japanese voices, for those who prefer it. And for last, and probably the most import "thing" for a Final Fantasy game, create a descent story !! I think a Final Fantasy game can rise or fall even only just by it's story. So please try to get the original writer back, i know he said The last story on the Wii will probably be has last work, and i know he probably won't do it, but please try ! The only RPG this generation of which i think off which comes close to a traditional Final Fantasy game, is Eternal Sonata. I actually feel pretty sad that i have to type this review down, this is just because i have very fond memories of the "real" Final Fantasy games, and i truly hope i can i play a descent one, once again in the near future.… Expand

This game is definitely the best game in the series. You will see new features, an updated combat system, and a new story, which follows on from the previous game. The whole game lasts more than 40 hours, including all side-quests. This is definitely a must buy for Final Fantasy fans.

This game might not be a masterpiece for some people, but it will never be a game that get a zero. I admit, the music in this game is less amazing compare to the original and it is obvious the budget of the making this game is much lower compare to the original, but the game is still great. I enjoy this game very much and i actually enjoy this much more than the original. It's worth your money, definitely.… Expand

I picked up the collector's edition for 79.99. So far I am 10 hours in, and I currently am quite pleased. A few things about the game imo. 1) The story is simple with a set goal, so simple that at times it may appear to be a bad story. I just reached a stage in the game though where it appears to be picking up, I just got through a shocker moment that adds to the story value, at least imo. 2) The battle/game play is much better. No more is the fail game over when the party dies, but this comes at a price. The bosses are now a true pain in the ass with the new wound feature of the game. I just got done with a fight where literally my characters max HP got reduced for 1400 hp max hp, to 400 max hp. 3) The game is extremely open now, you can pretty much do whatever you want in any order you want, the towns are big, there are no stores to buy stuff at, but the merchant lady who sells you the stuff is pretty hilarious if you listen to the things she says. 4) Noel is an interesting character, I like him, but I really prefer Serah, I like her as a character in this game. The monster system is totally awesome lol, I love it lol. Nothing like summoning your Behemoth out to run over a guy in mere seconds. 5) The Crystarium system is awesome now, way better than FF13, you are aloud to build your characters however you wish from an early stage on, you start off with 3 basic roles, but you can unlock all 6 probably within 5 hours or so if you wish. 6) There is maybe an hour or so of tutorials, then you are free to go nuts. Overall if I was rating it right now I would give it around an 8.0/10, it is good, not the best FF I have ever played, but entertaining and that is all I can hope for these days with the state of RPG's. More info to come the farther I move in the game :P… Expand

It's a great game, better than FFXIII.

If you're going into FFXIII-2 thinking SE learned from the complaints about the last game and created a rich, explorable world for this one, you're going to be disappointed. The world of FFXIII-2 is made up of a small handful of areas with nothing really connecting them to each other (think Kingdom Hearts). The ridiculous time travel storyline gives the developer's a convenient excuse to recycle areas with different lighting/weather effects and pass them off as new areas. I have to give them a pass on this, because to my understanding, this game is largely an attempt to make use of the large amount of unused assets created for FFXIII. I think your feelings on FFXIII's battle system will largely determine whether or not you enjoy this game as it is essentially the same aside from the monster collecting. The game still looks and sounds great even if a few of the new musical tracks are truly cringe-worthy (the heavy metal chocobo theme, for example). The music was one of the best things about FFXIII and luckily, all of the most familiar themes from that game make appearances here. They made some rather unfortunate additions to the gameplay, like QTEs and a lot of truly awful puzzle rooms that look like they came straight out of a PS2 game circa 2002. Other than that, this 20-hour sequel if pretty enjoyable. I wouldn't recommend paying full price for it though.… Expand

The production of this game feels cheap. All MONSTERS' models are direct importation from FFXIII minus some basic recoloring. STORY lacks focus, full of plot holes and poorly thought out. Boring COMBAT & LEVELING - little input/thinking is needed - only requiring to smash the X button to win. LACK OF CHALLENGING CONTENT - the only challenge comes in the form of a minigame that is NOT combat related. MUSIC - biggest disappointment... lack of character in all but one or two pieces. CONCLUSION: This game is milking off your fanboyism from previous installments of the series.… Expand

The ending to Final Fantasy XIII contained a contradiction; it broke the rules. But it rang true to the game's overarching theme of the infinite strength of the human spirit, with characters that declared they would contradict all the rules -- a touching note to end on. Final Fantasy XIII-2 then desperately jumps through fanatical loops in trying to dismantle the respectable conclusion of another game, and to a point of near hilarity. Savvy followers may even have questions of smaller magnitude, such as why everyone is suddenly capable of using magic. Well they just can, says the game's datalog. Why didn't Square just make Lightning a pop singer and call it a day? But it's naïve to say it all ends there, and unfair to claim that Final Fantasy XIII-2 isn't for the fans. It's not even half complete when the credits roll, and a plethora of content still waits untapped. It's a monster collector's favorite hunting spot, a trailblazer's backpack of spoils, and a completionist's paradise. Cameos and salutes to older games abound, challenges to truly test those thirsty for battle await, and powerful skills and items lie in hiding - this is a gamer's game, and it's damn well appreciated.… Expand

This is not an FINAL FANTASY game of the good ones, it appears any more DLC to beast that does not shine in excess. To your defense if I recognize your beautiful graphs and entertaining advance, but your problem is that it is not what your name sells. The essence of this saga is the story and your main characters, and in FFXIII-2 the argument is very weak and short. The trips in the time it has been definitively a wrong idea. I hate Mogu, casino, trips in the time, the ending, Chocolina, to look for the whole stage for almost invisible appliances, celebrities, Academia and the sonorous sung band.… Expand

Much like only a biased hater would give Final Fantasy XIII-2 a 0 rating, only a fanboy would give it a perfect 10. Let's be honest, it is not a bad game and you can definitely enjoy it - if you let yourself - but it's certainly not the highlight of the Final Fantasy franchise. Most issues with the first game have been fixed in some way or another and even though, if you look for them, you will find a few new problems, there's nothing game-breaking. I could go through a list but really, all you need to remember is that you cannot trust reviews and that the only way to truly know if a game was worth your time is to play it yourself. If you have enjoyed previous installations to the Final Fantasy series, you don't owe it to yourself, but you should definitely give yourself the opportunity to find out if you can't enjoy this one too.… Expand

No matter you like it or not.You still can't miss it.This game worth to spend time playing.surely ,you could enjoy the view ,the music,the drama ,the new battle system.However the system is not smooth enough.but it still a classical game.

They took XIII, improved upon it in many areas, but, it's obvious the game is nothing more than a cash grab. The first warning sign is when you first visit Serendipity (The casino/theme park/relief of the game) and you have attendants telling you certain attractions aren't available yet. Yup. DLC. Also, the ending, had the potential of being one of the more memorable endings in a video game for quite some years, but it falls flat when you're prompted with a "to be continued.." screen, hinting at further DLC to finish off the story! Heaven forbid you'll have to pay for said dlc.. The long and short of it is, the game feels.. Unfinished, rushed and is devoid of any real charm. Sure you'll get your money's worth, game length clocking in at about 40 hours, but when you're finished with a product, and all you can think of is, "is that it?", something isn't right.… Expand

One of the best final fantasy games I have played, great story which builds a connection between you and the characters, fixed just about every issue that Final Fantasy XIII had and it did it without hurting any other part of the game as well. Good combat that scaled with the game, great soundtrack with many lyrical tracks that fit the environment. The antagonist is one of the best in any video game period. Hope square makes XIII-3.… Expand

Just another Enix title further destroying the multi-million dollar, detail-oriented franchise known as Final Fantasy. Also to all the imbeciles constantly talking about how Square went in a different direction, you're misinformed. The Final Fantasy team quit when SquareSoft and Enix merged. That team is now known as Mistwalker (developer of Xbox RPGs now). Enix basically told the FF team that they were going to use the FF characters however they wanted and the FF team left. It's humorous to me too, because the Final Fantasy franchise has taken a dive since that happened. It first began with 10 and it's only become worse with the minor intermittent blip that was 12 being decent. Thirteen is a monstrosity that should have been aborted and XIII-2 is a blatant followup with profit as the only goal. Game design being the last thing on the list that SquareEnix cares about. Let the sycophants pilot the new era of fad gaming. FF became the new CoD, that being pathetic. I wonder when the DLC for Coach purses will hit for XIII-2.… Expand

I firmly believe the turning point for this series was the departure of Matsuno part-way through FF12. If he had stayed and finished the game I think it would be held in the same regard as 6, 7, 8 and 9. It's a shame how the series has gone, it doesn't even seem like they're stuck in the past, they just have the completely wrong idea of what their audience want.

This game is as open as any RPG fan could've hoped for it to be. With plenty of backtracking options, epic tasks, enemies, and weapons to go and hunt down, it does everything I look for in a game of this kind, right. You'd really be doing yourself a disservice if you own either console this game is on, and don't give it a shot. It's beautiful, its gameplay is remarkably satisfying, it's accessible to those who don't care to put forth as much effort—and sure as hell packs some content in there for those who do. For those criticizing the demo, yeah I think it was a pretty out–of–context cutout of the story to have used as a demo. But really, are there any scenes you can extract from a spoiler–sensitive RPG that would work as a demo? I think it's about time gamers let go of the notion that the only job game developers have is to satisfy their expectations. I'd imagine that most diehard gamers consider games works of art. If that's case, then try and imagine art critics criticizing the greats for each successive piece, rather than stepping back and appreciating the creator for his / her credibility and believing in the excellence they know they're capable of producing. The story of XIII-2 is in many ways more artistic and thoughtful than that of its predecessor. It toys with the idea of consequence, and jabs at the fail proof missive that games historically run by. That is, that the protagonist is right in every way, and none of the sacrifices he / she made are worth reconsidering. Give Square a break. Do yourself a favor. Get this game. It's definitely my favorite of this *and* last year.… Expand

Great game. Don't listen to people that are hating the game only because of the name. The game gives you several options and brings back several elements from the classic FF games. Most fun I have had with FF since X.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is an average game, it has amazing graphics and great storytelling, but the story isn't that good, and the combat is just horrible. You can rely on Auto-Battle to win everything, and the game is only long because of all the repetitive missions they put in there. I'd recommend this game to anyone starting to get into JRPGs since it's fairly easy to pick up and play, and if they thought this was okay, then they might be interested in other JRPGs by companies such as NIS… Expand

All of these idiots posting 0's for this game, and most other games these days, are really starting to get on my nerves. A 0 is supposed to represent a game that is utterly unplayable due to mechanics or bugs. Stop reviewing games when you've only played less than 20 minutes of it, and keep your fanboydem to yourself. As for FFXIII-2, it's a decent game. It's definitely not the highlight of the series, and there are some questionable story choices that Square-Enix made, but it's overall a satisfying game. The good: the presentation is fantastic: clean menus, fantastic art-design, even though the graphics themselves are a bit dated, and decent music. The battles are fast and fun, and the whole collecting monsters mechanic is kind of cool (although I would have personally rather seen a full cast of characters). The game is no longer a straight corridor from cutscene to boss to cutscene, offering many diverging paths, distractions, and even small choices, and the game allows you to go back and redo areas. The not so good: the story. It makes very little sense, and I found myself wondering why all of this was happening. There is good emotion at the end, but it's a shame that the rest was bland. Hopefully the ending will be cleaned up in future DLC. The characters were not as good as others in the series: there are only two of them, and they don't really click well. And where is Lightning? She was such a fantastic character, it's almost an insult to give her such a backseat role.… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This game ends with the words "To Be Continued". They seriously wants us to pay for an ending?! Just for that alone I would say avoid this game. I spent 30 hours getting through the story hoping for it to be resolved in someway. Whether it's a happy or sad ending I'm prepared to accept it. But no ending? Seriously?! ENDING SPOILER AHEAD So Serah dies, I was ok with that. Yeul has said that Serah's existence is a paradox, so I kinda expected her to die. But now it seems all her (the player's) work is in vain. Cocoon still gets destroyed, and the chaos of Valhalla is unleashed into the world. Then what's the point of the story? Why didn't Etro get her heart back from Caius? Anyways. This game was a huge letdown, avoid!… Expand

Lightning and the gang is back for another installment of Final Fantasy. The gameplay is very similar to 13 so if you really enjoyed the paradigm shifting you'll feel at home. They added a monster as your third member in your party and you can catch and alter your team with whatever monsters you want in your paradigm set. I actually really liked the time travel story line that this game has, most of the time time travel is really out there but this game manged to be interesting and i understood the storyline by the time the game was over. Overall i had a blast playing this game, some might be disappointed by the odd story but if you want a fun ride, you should pick this up… Expand

FFXIII wasn't a good game and from the 20 something hours that I have played of XIII-2 let me say that the first one was much better. =/ Mini-games on XII-2 are just as pathetically simple and shallow as the useless NPC's and "towns" where you can't even enter 98% of the buildings. Then we have Serah and Noel talking about paradoxes and coming up with different theories on the spot like if we were watching a morning cartoon or the movie Goonies (the whole thing is tacky and really cheesy) while the Kupo is just plain annoying. Every time I heard Kuppoppo I felt like strangle the damn thing. Battles were hardly a challenge, I really don't know why the game doesn't have a hard mode. And why are we still controlling just 1 character? Why only Noel, Serah and random Monster on the party? What with Serah's skimpy outfit, couldn't they make it more revealing? And what was the point of the crystarium if the thing was even more linear than in the first game? And let's not even talk about the branching paths, what a joke! Once I beat this crap (trophies is the only motivation right now) I'm gonna trade it in for Yakuza 4, Atelier Totori or something. The game sucks man. Specially the Synth Metal songs they used for some of the battle sequences and chocobo. Like seriously, who the fffuuu thought that including such thing in a FF game was a good idea? This is not DMC for god's sake!… Expand

A preposterously shallow game in terms of battle and story. The battle system tries to fuse action with more traditional turn-based RPG elements. You know what they say happens when you please everyone? You end up pleasing no one. I won't "spoil" any bits of the story, but I will say that time travel is a terrible plot device even when it is done well. And it wasn't done well in XIII-2. After listening to the music in XIII-2, I wonder how we got to this point from FF4,6,7,8,9,10, and 11. It's like they're not even trying anymore. In short: Everything about this game sucks, except the openness of the world and the graphics.… Expand

I really wanted to love this game. I did not play XIII due to the negatives I read about it, and when I heard that many of those were improved in this game I was excited and gave it a try. I have not played a FF game since 9, and my favorite is 3. I am a very old school ff player, as such when done with FFXII-2 I was left wondering what the heck I just played. It was an interesting game, with very nice graphics, a bit of a lame storyline, but it was not a Final Fantasy game in it's old school meaning. It had the perception of being a freely travelable world, but I still found it too linear. I found myself missing the old ways of leveling up your characters, and found the new system too basic. I absolutely hated controlling only one character in battle instead of the standard four, and the fact that the easiest thing to do in battle is just keep hitting the auto battle drove me nuts. Overall I felt they had taken the Final Fantasy idea and simplified it to the point where you hardly need any strategy to complete the game. I never had to spend hours leveling to be able to defeat a boss, or collect coins for equipment, and that just doesn't feel right.… Expand

I'm giving this a 10? Why? Because it works. The story was good, the characters were enjoyable and the gameplay was fun. It wasn't perfect and you can tell that this game was rushed, being a sequel and all, but still for a Final Fantasy sequel, it works. Highly enjoyable and highly recommended. Although I do feel cheated about having to buy DLCs just so I could see the complete ending.

Where FFX-2 closed the open ending of FFX, and took you at least 40 hours to finish, FFXIII-2 took an ending that was slightly open just to tell half a story and leave you completely in the dark and frustrated when reading "to be continued..." right before the credits roll, and it took me about 15 hours to finish. So far it's pretty FF-unworthy. I didn't get lost in the game as I usually did with final fantasy installments, like 7, 8 or 10, even though I felt like I was going to when I first put the disc in my ps 3. But soon it started to feel like a mixture of Kingdom Hearts and earlier (ps 1) Final Fantasies.,(partially because for the first time they did something Kingdom Heartsy to it. A movie at the start, then the whole game only cutscenes, and a movie at the end.) Other than that, the good looking, but very tiny worlds you'd run around in, the way it's overly based on side-questing, with a very short main storyline, the storyline itself being extremely thin, almost like it's been thought up by one guy whilst being drunk and instead of filling in the blanks and making a coherent story simply left it like that and turned it into a game, making it feel more like episode 1 of FFXIII the season than a complete game. However, I'm not completely without sympathy for this game. Sure, it has some definite flaws, not to mention the ending which was horrible beyond belief.... But still, I had fun playing, despite all the minuses (at least up till the final sequence), a lot more than I had with FF XIII. I didn't really care about the storyline being kinda lame, and the way they just pointlessly added FF XIII characters into part 2 just to have them in the game... It's only now that I finished it that I'm bummed out about it. So if you don't mind an anti-climax, you'll have fun with this while it lasts… Expand

Final Fantasy XIII-2 brings new things to the series. First, the Cinematic Action : there are actually not that many of them, and then they don’t really impact the general gameplay, taken back from the first Final Fantasy XIII. Neither too slow nor too fast, they fit pleasantly in boss battles. Now let’s talk about THE new thing of this sequel : the Live Trigger. System by which the game asks your opinion (quite often), it makes your adventure even more immersive and the key events even more thrilling. At some point, you fight a boss that is invincible unless you pick the right choice. Last but not least, your choice will make it possible or not for alternative endings (called Paradox endings) to appear throughout your progression. The Live Trigger is in my honest opinion biggest change in FFXIII-2 and the most awesome add in the series for a while. Let’s get it straight : SquareEnix heard the concerns loud and clear. It’s easier to see than to say, but you now have a central menu from where you can jump in various locations at different times. From one world/time, you can unlock one or more other locations/eras by opening gates. The point is that you’re not just completing one level and going to the others : you’ll have to get back to places you’ve already been to in order to solution your present situation. The world is so open that you can even land in hostile environments full of monsters way above your level, it makes the progression particularly intense, because when you unlock a new gate, you can never know what lies ahead. Unfortunately, the game still shows some inclination towards telling you what to do and where to go, which spoils this reborn exploration a bit. Similarly, it’s too bad the alternative futures appear as part of the main story, rather than created by the player’s search. But at one moment, the game suddenly throws in the open with somewhat little indications. While this pure exploration is quite welcome, there’s a big chance you’ll get stuck for a while… The numerous side-quests, well-thought puzzles, addicting mini-games and multiple secrets hidden here and there definitely make up for it. Those quests, whether they’re part of the main story or not, are varied. Another major new thing of this sequel is the feral link system. Sometimes when you defeat a monster you can get a cristal that allows to add the aforementioned monster to your party. You have a wide range : all the creatures featured in FFXIII + some unique to FFXIII-2. There will definitely be some some of your liking and, honestly, how’s never dreamed of fightning alongside a Gold Chocobo, a Tomberry or an army of Cactuars? This system also allows you to strengthen your beasts by “mergingâ€� two of them : this way you can transfer the skills and stats of one to another you like best. However good this system may be, it definitely can’t make up for the lack of playable characters. Excepted the short secquence with Lightning at the beginning of the game, you only have Noel & Serah to choose from. The monsters are cool, but they can NEVER replace the charisma of a character, might he be new or existing (and by the way thanks to SquareEnix to focus the PR talk on Lightning whereas she hardly appear in the game!). Graphically speaking, it far surpasses everything I’ve seen so far : Backgrounds and characters reach a degree of realism never seen before, weather and lights effects are unrivaled. Academia (pictured above) is the most magnificent scenery I’ve ever seen : it just looks like Star Wars! My eyes are filled with pleasure at every second, even though the frame-rate drops quite some times. The original score is beautiful as well depsite some missed cues: beautiful melodies and dark themes co-exist with atrocities like the Hard Metal Chocobo (!). I must stress that the end of the game fully benefits from it : the music reinforces the action and the emotional side on the events. Unfortunetaly, nothing is perfect, and the ending scene of Final Fantasy XIII-2 is far from that. I won’t spoil you of course, but the ending leaves nothing but a bitter taste. From the information a could gather, none of the Paradox endings comes to alluviate that. SquareEnix will have to give some explanations, because they would have once more betrayed the fans for economic purposes. Secondly and apart from the fact you play the whole game with only two characters and a mob, we can lament the somewhat low difficult level (even in normal mode) during most of the adventure despite some tight corners like in the very end. However, this is compensated by the impressive boss battles.… Expand

i wont write the same has before because metacritic erase my comment, maybe metacritic is fan of FF? or much FFXIII fans crying, whatever, recognize the death of the series, j-pop completely kill the series and its linear story y predictably, epics soundtracks into shi.tty music, the game now have much more less sidequest because is too much linear, travel time epic game?,ja you have Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, and now Square have the same idea as other companies, launch DLC to gain much more money selling **** because they are not capable of delivering a complete game, with all content included and finish the story of the game in the same game and not in DLC or another **** as before, this generation of consoles and users/players kill this.… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. A short Breakdown of the game (Some Spoilers, i guess): Gameplay: If you've played FF XIII you may be instantly familiar with the battle mechanics, since they are almost identical with those of its predecessor. New additions are a slightly less linear Crystarium (youre able to level up the roles as you see fit almost from the start), some QTEs during major Battles (almost there a quite few of those) and the need to carefully chose your 3. partymember from a wide variety of monster you can capture (since not all abilities you may know from XIII are avaible for your two mainchars Noel / Serah). Therefore, if you were not fan of FF XIII battle mechanics you may want to consider this before buying. My opinion in general on Combat: its still flashy and fun, however lacks a higher degree of tactics (reading: being too eays) especially in the later party of the game, since most battles boild down to buff /debuff enemy--> attack and heal your team up as needed. As for the exploration: Most areas of the world are less linear, however are heavily recylced during your time travels (Almost all areas are exactly the same in their respective, different time periods besides the occasional colour palette swap from green to blue etc.). Some towns where added, altough youre still restricted to one (this time pretty talkative) shop. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music: Nothing special to say about this one. The soundtracks consists mainly of J-pop with the occasional Final fantasy Main theme which is ever so present, since this tradition was started with "eyes on me" in FF VIII (alltough FF XIII-2's main title may not feel as out of place as Leona Lewis entry in FF XIII, it still has no real connection to the plot at all). Even two heavy Metal tracks made it into the game, which can be heard while riding a particular Chocobo or fighting a certain boss. Although there a some tracks, especially nearing the end, which perfectly fit their respective scenes however most of the soundtrack does very little fuel to the atmosphere and occasionaly feels pretty off. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Story If a good Story makes or breaks a game for you, you may want to skip on this one. The main plot lacks a clear goal for the most part, besides jumping from time gate to time gate untill you EVENTUALLY reach Valhalla. The new Antagonist Caius however is, like most side characters, pretty interesting and much more threatening because of his longer screentime as his "predecessor" Barthandelus from FF XIII. Sadly, the same can not be said about Serah and Noel, which for the most part are as single minded and shallow as for example Snow from FF XIII and often do not contribute much to the somewhat lacking plot overall, besides repeating their ambitions and things which were stated 20 secs before over and over again. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- One more thing you might consider before buying this game: If you are not a fan of story related DLC, which is essential to the main plot, do NOT buy this game. FF XIII-2 showcases more than one way how DLC should NOT be implemented into a game. Certain Areas like a Colliseum HAVE to be visited during your main Quest, however unlike in FF X you cannot fight a single monster there, without investing some real money for DLC (I wouldnt mind this as much, if there was a real optional Boss like Yiazmat or Ozma. To be honest, theres no true reason for maxing your characters/monsters besides bragging rights, like in earlier entries). Theres even a greyed out spot on your Timeline map, indicating this missing content. (Even one of the games in the somewhat empty casino, is described as "Soon avaible as DLC" when asked about the rules). Far worse however is the announced continuation of the MAIN story line (which simply ends with a "to be continued"). Whereas in Dragon Age 2 or Mass effect story DLC added some sidestories, you are now forced to buy the "real" ending as soon at is avaiable. (Sadly the current "ending" suffers from a very bad case of cliffhanger, which at last makes me NOT want to buy future content). ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To conclude this review: If youre desperate for a new JRPG (which sadly is still pretty rare this gen, if your not from japan that is ^^) you may want to give this one a shot. Just dont expect too much from it, since the short production span clearly shows.… Expand

This game is great. It's open world and various side quests expand greatly from XIII. Plus the new monster system keeps you coming back to find the rarest allies and level them up to max. The new crystirium may be linear, but it adds consequences to what you level up by introducing 2-sized nodes. The time traveling is great and it even allows you to replay various time zones in case you missed anything. Overall, it's great! It tops XIII in all ways and is completely fun. Whereas in other FF's, the battle can get boring, in XIII-2, it doesn't, simply because of all the different monsters you can capture and new abilities you can try. Before this, I thought Square Enix was beginning to fail, but i believe XIII-2 is a new beginning for them. This game truly deserves better reviews then it has been receiving. The only thing I wished they changed was the sappiness. In almost all cut scenes the one character is always sad and the other has to cheer him up. They always have to say something cheesy to make the other feel better and it gets really old in every cut scene. Other then that, start searching through your couches for money and go buy this game.… Expand

I cant beleive all the hate this has been receiving... I played FF13 (1st one) and got a platinum trophy on it... was it any good? well after i managed to survive the first 20 or so hours... it was decent... still VERY short of any expectation of a Final Fantasy game... 1 mini game... thats it... This one now... Sequel that promised to fix all that was wrong... No more linear maps... Towns... NPC with thousands of incidental dialogues... A few Dozens of minigames.... A casino (somewhat empty)... Chocobo Races... Monster Collection "DQ Style"... ChronoTrigger time traveling... It is still by no mean perfect (FF13-versus will be) hehe... But it is as close as they were able to do in the last 6 to 10 years! Compared to the 1st FF13, the story is much more comprehensible... the first was a mess... this one has nice values... and only a few major inconsistencies (for a game that deal with time traveling thats something) I am not a huge fan of quicktime events... but it did give some kind of interactivity with lenghty awesome cutscene... video quality was awesome as always... Music at the begining was horrendous and didnt fit the game mood and setting at all... but overall its a very decent job... especially for intense EPIC over the top moments... Overall this game deserve anywhere between 8.4 and 9.2... And I am giving a 10 to try and balance things up a bit cause it absolutely deserve more than a 7...… Expand

This is just ridiculous how people rate this either 0 or 10. But obviously we all know that most of the old school final fantasy fans would be disappointed by this **** grubbing garbage Square Enix try to feed us as they try milking out every bit of cash and hope for this ongoing masterpiece. When i'm playing a J-RPG(and I know most of you old schools will agree with me) is that I want a main character with a personality that everyone can burn to their memories which SE didn't do for this game, instead they just made me want to hate every single character because of how crappy they developed throughout the story; Also the game should have a storyline that can engage them like the previous Final Fantasy titles have done which makes them yearn for more, but instead they mostly put out an eyesore of ****ty cutscenes just to show off their retarded ass high res graphics(which is what SE is aiming for now...) which cuts down a lot of the gameplay... not only that the music is so god damn bull**** that it doesn't have the magic feel that everyone can enjoy. This genre is not even considered to be a J-RPG anymore and not only that it's probably is that "Final" Fantasy...… Expand

I......do not.......like......RPGs.... With that being said, I LOVED this game. Nah, just jokin', Its garbage. Disk garbage, box garbage, gameplay garbage, storyline garbage, character voicing garbage, designs garbage, they only NON garbage thing about this ol' hunk'a crap, is that it is breakeable. Done.

I read a lot of complaints about every aspect of this game: music, combat, story, length. Then I realized those complaints came from people who never played it. Impossible as it may seem I think that this game is one of the best final fantasies in a long long time. Why, you may ask? To put it simply, here's why: - loved the characters: they have a troubled past but don't spend the screen time looking sad staring at the distance - music: people didn't like mostly because they heard "crazy chocobo" out of context, just that song - the monster collection: it is deep, funny and can shift the balance in battle - battle itself: challenging, fast-paced, spamming the X-button will lead to nowhere, really - story: it is simple to follow, more focused about the dynamic between characters then the overly abused: young boy that looks like a girl will save the world with the power of friendship. Then we have the ending, I'm not going to spoil it but I can understand why people would complain about it, on the other hand I think it is perfectly done as it is. In the end, I recommend this game to everyone who loved the previous one, and to all the people who somehow feel like they have been "betrayed" by Square: they will find an epic tale through time with likable characters. Stop complaining about non-issues, focus on what the game has to offer instead of features that are absent from previous games.… Expand

As a (potentially rare) fan of FFXIII, I found myself wound up in the hype for this game. I was aware of all of the potential shortcomings, including reduced team members, a monster recruit system (which sometimes is hit and miss in RPG's), and the potential for a time travelling story to be a complete mess (it's a difficulty topic to approach). Before I launch in, I'd like to say that I sank about 50 hours into this game and got the platinum trophy, so I think I saw most of what it had to offer (except DLC). To be fair, I think the game has some pretty crisp graphics (very similar to FFXIII) and some pretty cool moments in the mid game. I also think Caius is a pretty interesting antagonist, which I've seen echoed in many reviews. However, I think some of the aspects of the game got too simplified. In terms of battles, I found that I only had to be strategic with some of the after game bosses. In the main game, I got interested in trying to complete sidequests and found that I overlevelled VERY quickly, making the rest of the game a breeze. Normally I would say this is my fault, but one of the promises this time was a less linear game, so I think my interest in exploring is justified. The side quests themselves were fairly uninvolved as well. I expected a great deal of time hopping, but only in later quests does this seem to apply. The chrystarium is also redesigned, and I feel for the worse. I do appreciate the strategy of having certain crystals 'worth' more than others, but I found that they severely limited the abilities of the two characters where you would be foolish not to use them in those roles. As such, it seems to just be a matter of "how can I boost this characters best stat" rather than "how can I make an effective character". The monster taming system adds a bit more variety to the battle roles, and while I have seen some people complain about it, I actually did like this system. It also played a lot on resource management since you weren't sure (unless you faq) how good a monster will be, even at high levels. Combine all of the above with the auto-fight option, and you have a very streamlined battle system that might be a bit easy for veterans of the series. Finally, I felt the story was very underwhelming. As I said above, there are some pretty cool set pieces in the mid game, but there are also parts that had me scratching my head. For example (without spoilers), in one time period you thwart a mob of monsters and then in a later time period (same location) your characters feel sorry for them, help them, and then have to beat them down once more. There were a few events in the story that made me feel that the characters were acting inconsistent. I'm also not a fan of how some characters were shoe-horned into the story, with explanation to be provided in DLC. You can make assumptions based on information in the game, but that information is obtained by achieving fragments, which many people may not have the patience to acquire all of them. I'm fine with supplemental DLC, but not to explain portions of the story. In the end, I give it a 6 because despite having an inconsistent story and simple battles, I found myself oddly enjoying many parts of the game. I just think it wasn't a sum greater than it's parts in this case.… Expand

Paradoxes... past is future... future is confusing... . yeuls are dead ..... something with oracle drive... wtf is going on... SE can have my $60 for free but please end this pain and stop with unfathomable stories, linear gameplay, cheesy sound tracks, x-button smash fights, no real development of weapons or accessories . Instead of wasting time on making abundance of useless weapons and accessories (which 95% of them the players will never use) why doesn't SE focus on all of the above issues. To all the players out there be warned, you will be in a real paradox upon finishing the game... so please don't end up wasting 50 hours of your precious time... So unsatisfying... might have to play suikoden II, all over again just feel what a real RPG should be...… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. (Ratings are out of 10, where 0 is the worst, 10 is the best) - Story:2 - character rating: 2 - graphics: 10 - Sounds: 10 - Music: 10 - gameplay:10 -Where to begin? -The good: -The graphics are second to none, the sounds are unique, the music is epic, the fighting style is the best i've seen yet. -The bad: -No epic weapons like they had from FF13-1, none of the weapons carried over from the previous game, fighting was more of a chore that you had to do over and over, leveling up had no benefit in the game. -I liked the idea of puzzles, i really did, however the puzzles they had were boring, not to mention WAY too many. -your stuck with 2 characters and a monster when it comes to fighting, I would have preferred a larger HUMAN party, perhaps some of the old cast? -The Ugly: -They ended the game with the good guys dying!, like what is this, a Korean love story?!? -To be continued? you need to download the ending, which means you MIGHT have to pay for it?!? thats like buying a movie from a store, watching it right up till the end, and having to pay to see the ending! ever cheap! -ideas for improvement: -Remake the 2nd part, cut out the time travel, go along with the fal'cie of pulse being awakened after the death of the coccoon fal'cie, or something! look at FF13-1, it was a really good game (sadly it didn't have HUMAN interaction, a happy reuinion with vanille and her tribe would have made the game perfect) still it had merit. -bring back the epic weapon building stuff from FF13-1, bring back puzzles similar to FF-10 where you HAD to use your head and look around, add more groups of people to run into on pulse. -If your going to add a second part to a story, re-using the old characters and adding some new ones is generally a good IDEA, it keeps the story fresh and attractive, an example, snow should have been able to follow serah and noel, as well as be usable when fighting. heck why not collect all the old members as you open up time? then have a epic battle at the end and a HAPPY FINISHED ending. -There you have it i've said my peace, I hope the dquare Enix dev team read this and learn form it. This is Aronshade from Ontario, Canada, Cheers… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Final Fantasy XIII had a lot of problems, and Square Enix have certainly made an attempt to fix that in this sequel. The corridor-shooter style level design from the first game is gone. You're now given a menu of levels to explore and unlock, each a different time and place in the future of XIII's world. This makes exploration and progress similar to the Kingdom Hearts games, allowing you to explore different areas at your own pace, without constantly forcing you to follow the plot. The battle system is pretty much the same as XIII, however enemy encounters luckily don't last 5 minutes each time anymore, and the monster taming mechanic adds to the formula somewhat, though it really lacks the depth of other RPGs that use a similar feature. The storyline and characters are a significant improvement over XIII-2's predecessor. Our two main characters Serah and Noel manage to be surprisingly enjoyable characters; Serah manages to avoid being bland or annoying, though her characterization is mostly limited and safe. Noel has quite an interesting and intense backstory; coming from a future where he is the last human alive. Meanwhile the ridiculously outfitted villain this time, Caius is right up there as one of the most compelling bad guys in the series, with a motivation that doesn't just boil down to killing everyone for the hell of it. The cast is small, but you manage to connect with them on this journey. The plot isn't anything great, but it's tolerable due to the character goals being made very clear to you throughout. The game comes to an end with a cliffhanger, likely to be resolved with downloadable chapters in future. Some people are going to feel cheated by the "To Be Continued" card, but the climax itself is a bold and shocking scene that is deserving of praise for subverting the series' often formulaic storytelling and trying to do something no previous entry in the series had dared to do. On the visual side, the game holds all the marks of SE's excellent production values, with beautiful landscapes, and detailed characters. The soundtrack isn't really up to the series' standards, but a lot of it works with it's use in-game (the Devil May Cry style metal however always seems to be played at the most unfitting of moments). While replacing XIII's A-to-B style of level design, the sequel offers wide open areas, with numerous interconnecting paths, giving us a world we can actually explore. What comes as a disappointment however is that these areas are reused often as separate eras in your journey through time. One particular area, the Yaschas Massif, is used as 4 separate levels, each one making minimal changes to layout and content. It's the sign of a rushed game, resulting in a world not as expansive as would be hoped for. In it's current state, Final Fantasy XIII-2 is half-finished, awaiting DLC to expand on it's content. but what it does offer us makes up immensely for the prequel; this is an RPG that's fun. It has a fast-paced battle, as well as a large array of environments to explore, with plenty of treasures to find, and a casino with Gold Saucer-esque minigames to distract you. It feels like an apology for all of Final Fantasy XIII's faults; if a rushed one at that. The game is only really a "good" RPG, that doesn't provide you with the standards that made the Final Fantasy series one of the biggest names in gaming. It's a fun adventure while it lasts, but it will need to add some impressive new stuff if it wants to become truly worth the price of admission.… Expand

Boring! Ridiculous story and not captivating at all. Combat is no different from FF13 i.e. boring too. Missed the linear story of FF 13. In contrast, FF 13-2 is just made up of a bunch of episodes loosely connected together by travelling through the different eras using time-travelling gates. I wasted 40 hours of my precious time, not to mention money spent. Graphically and artistically, FF 13-2 puts GOTY titles like the Mass Effect series to shame. The character models are just beautiful. The scenary is stunning. Too bad, the story is plain garbage. Hmmm ... I'm still drooling over the independently flowing strands of hair from Serah and Noel. Not to mention Lightning's naturally flowing feathered-skirt. Can't imagine such beautifully rendered graphics on a last-gen console like the PS3. Bet if this title makes it to the PC, we'll really get life-like characters. OBTW, I missed the CGI cutscenes from FF13. The rendered cutscenes in FF13-2 just can't compare. Overall, FF series has reached a new low.… Expand

I hear people saying this game is so much better than the original 13. But, is it? It makes something different, that's for sure and "improves" on what people criticized in the past. But, if this game is good is because it picked up on what a PHENOMENAL game stopped. XIII-2 is good, fact. But, for me, XIII was way better. It had a more cohesive story, epic, compelling. We actually understood what was going on. With XIII-2 we have Serah (who is very vanilla) and Noel (who is a better character) and a confusing story that appears not to be going anywhere. I enjoyed XIII-2. But it only made me miss XIII and who good it actually was back in the day.… Expand

8.5 would be my score if it was available here, it isn't so I generously bumped it up amidst the underwhelming scores given somewhat harshly on this site. I honestly don't have much to say in the way of negative things to attribute to this sequel. Perhaps the story isn't quite as captivating as XIII's was and there is frequent slow down in visiting new areas, but the combat system, soundtrack, voice acting, and the sheer amount of fun to be had here make this another top JRPG from Square Enix. It's simple if you didn't like XIII then don't buy this. If you liked, or even loved, XIII then you will very much enjoy this despite the fact that it is a little shorter in overall length.… Expand