Final Fantasy XIII-2

To say I’m having mixed feelings about Final Fantasy XIII-2 would be an understatement. It seems like they took the fans criticisms to heart, and brought back some of the staples that many people loved about Final Fantasy games in the past. Sounds good right?

I know I was in the minority when I said that I didn’t mind the corridors in Final Fantasy 13, the story was compelling enough to encourage me to push forward. My playthrough was 50 hours without the need to dilute the experience with aimless exploration. What appears to have happened is that they bring back exploring by way of hiding fragments within various sandboxes. You don’t explore a world at all, you explore small segments of a world and you can select which segment you want to explore via the ‘Historia Crux’. The Historia Crux feels like a Super Mario world map, as you get through areas you unlock new ones to explore. Here’s the thing, this is not the type of exploration that Final Fantasy is known for, it’s kind of a joke. I’m sure later in the game when it makes sense to revisit some of these areas because they have changed due to your actions it might be a little more engaging but as it stands now I feel this ‘addition’ has taken away my primary motivation in FF games, that is to say the story suffers.

While there is an over arching story that has Serah searching through time to find her sister, each of the areas in the Historia Crux feels like its own episode. Like any piece of episodic content, there will be good and bad parts, but in many cases you’re left with one piece of information to advance, or flesh out the over arching story. The problem with this in my mind is that the sub-plots here feels like most of these are insignificant or forgettable so far. I’m still early on so maybe this will improve with time but there isn’t a ton of motivation for me in this game.

There have been some neat changes to the paradigm combat system, first is the fact that you only have 2 characters to develop, to fill out the group however you get to add 3 monsters to your deck. Each monster has 1 of the classes assigned to them, so you get a little bit more control over which classes are available to you, provided that you have monsters of the type you’re looking for. Monsters are levelled up via the crystarium system just like the character, however instead of earning CP, they progress by using specific items that you can find or buy to level. The combat itself feels a little more reactive, or rather, you have less time to react, and it’s more about watching the opponents animations, it’s sort of neat but I’m not totally used to it yet.

I’m not going to talk about the Crystarium system at the moment because I don’t really feel like I understand it. Suffice to say it is different from the last game, in that you don’t seem to have separate crystals per class and it isn’t nearly as obvious what you’re getting when you spend your CP in the new system. I hope this makes more sense later but it just feels like clicking buttons at this point.

You know, despite all that, I’m still having some fun here, and I’m going to continue playing, I just unlocked the casino before turning in last night, and it’s just as tiresome as it was in FF7. I’m hopeful that some of this stuff evolves pretty soon though particularly the story.

Hey folks,

Just wanted to pop and drop a note to let you guys know what’s been going on.

Since my last post, I’ve started and finished a Chrono Trigger (the PSN version) playthrough, which I streamed entirely on my twitch.tv channel. That game held up surprisingly well over the years and I had a great time playing (and casting) it. Though I will say this, the PSN version is less than ideal, there is some unexplainable delays when going into/out of combat that were quite annoying especially considering how often you go into and out of combat. Story is great, music is awesome, and the gameplay is classic.. it’s well worth your time if you’re into rpgs and you’ve skipped it or forgot it (like I did).

I started a Darksiders replay, that game is still pretty fun though, if I recall the first half is much better than the last half, so we’ll see if I get through it all again, I’ll likely consider this my ‘refresher run’ for Darksiders 2 which is due out in June.

I’m also continuing my Final Fantasy 13 refresher run, I’ll be pushing pretty hard on this one since 13-2 is out in NA on the 31st. I’m in Chapter 11 at the moment, so I don’t have all that much further to go but I’ve run into some pacing problems that come with skipping all of the sidequests so I spent most of the night last night struggling through encounters which ultimately lead to a serious amount of backtracking and grinding.

Tonight will be a bit special though! I’ve got a copy of Rayman Origins scheduled to arrive today so the gf and I may coop cast through some of that tonight assuming that I can get things setup in my living room which I haven’t done before so… Technology permitting, that is the plan. Follow my twitch channel (linked above) to get notified when we go live, I’d guess early this evening (eastern) we’ll get started. Here’s a bit of a preview, I’ve never been so frustrated with her as I was playing Super Mario Bros Wii coop. I assume there will be much face palming and much frustrated grunts and groans and some ‘hurry the eff up’s and some ‘COME ON!’. It should be fun

So I’m still playing through Skyrim, slowly… I’ve got 13 days worth of sessions posted to my blip archive, playlist is below.

I’ve been running into more and more lockups in the PS3 version since the last patch. I’m hoping the next one will make it better but I’m doubtful based on some of the articles that were released the other day saying into a core platform problem for PS3.