Final Fantasy XIII-2 (2011)

If I had picked up a monkey's paw after finishing Final Fantasy XIII and wished upon it, hoping to see my gripes and nitpicks with that game fixed, Final Fantasy XIII-2 is the game I would receive. I feel that for each little thing that it does to improve upon its predecessor, there's some other change that either invalidates the improvement or takes away from another aspect of the game. It's a shame, because I think there is the mold here for a very cool game that I could have had a great time with.

I want to try something a little unusual with this review and organize my points in terms of each aspect of the first game that was "fixed" and what the metaphorical monkey's paw replaced it with or did to invalidate it. Apologies if it comes off a bit like a rant in the process, but I think it's a good way of looking at a game that feels very reactionary in the way it aims to tackle, correct, and sometimes overcorrect based on the criticisms that were leveraged towards Final Fantasy XIII.

My main complaint about XIII was regarding how you got a game over whenever your party leader died. This made zero sense, both in-world and as a gameplay mechanic, considering how easily certain enemies can one-shot kill you. XIII-2 fixes this! I was very happy to see that now when the leader dies the game simply swaps you over to your other character, giving you the ability to revive them if you have the proper spell or item on hand. This is a fantastic change which makes battles a lot more fun. Or it would, but the majority of the game is so easy that it's not a change you really notice much anyway outside of the final boss who presents an unprecedented difficulty spike and is thus a bit of an outlier to begin with. This kind of ties into my next point.

This sequel also removes the animation which played the first time you swapped paradigm roles each fight. This animation was an issue because while stylish and flashy, it left your characters vulnerable to enemy attacks as it was playing, meaning it was possible to lose or take significant damage because the animation took too long. Another great change, but also one that is not as significant as it would otherwise be because you can play like 85% of the game with the Ravager/Commando/Medic paradigm and never need to use the swap feature. Most enemies will die before you can ever stagger them due to low defensive stats so there's little reason to use anything else, especially when the game rewards you for quick battles via the ranking system.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is much less linear than XIII was, which I'm sure is a great thing for many who took issue with the notorious hallway design. It didn't really bother me much when I played it, but the areas in this game do feel a lot more fun to navigate because they are much more open. Scouring the corners of the map will often yield hidden items and fragments, allowing you to strengthen your characters. Yet it suffers from the issue that many open world games do, which is that there is very little to do in these open spaces. The items are basically the only draw to exploration and because this game rolls back enemy encounters to an odd pseudo random encounter format you have to deal with them constantly popping up and interrupting as you hunt for loot. Final Fantasy XII and XIII really had a good thing going with letting you see enemies in the overworld and choose to avoid them.

This game is also a lot less linear when it comes to progressing the story. You can actually tackle some parts out of order should you desire to and even the dialogue has options you can choose to learn more about the world and its characters. Side quests for random NPCs are an actual thing this time around, which is nice as well, though they typically are basic fetch quest type stuff. Nothing too exciting here, but the freedom this game offers is refreshing compared to its predecessor if nothing else.

Thankfully, XIII-2 gives you full access to your combat toolkit within a few hours of starting the game, where it took more like 15-20 for XIII to kick into full gear. As a result the early parts of the game are a lot more fun to play through. This too ends up being a bit of a double edged sword though because once you get around halfway through the game your characters just run out of abilities to learn, save for the class mastery ones. From that point on, the crystarium becomes a place only for converting experience points into stats, which is kind of lame. The crystarium UI is also confusing as hell. Even with a guide in hand it can be annoying to plan out how to grow your characters' stats.

So that covers the good stuff and most of my nitpicks. All the above are changes I view as positive, even if they are often undermined by other less necessary changes. Now for the bad stuff. Which is uh... it's the story. The story is pretty terrible, to be honest. Let's talk about why.

For a sequel, Final Fantasy XIII-2 does very little to build off the first game. Nearly all of the main cast is thrown to the sidelines in favor of Lightning's sister Serah (who did deserve more time on screen in XIII if you ask me) and newcomer Noel, who is definitely not some guy cosplaying Sora from Kingdom Hearts. The worldbuilding I enjoyed from the first game is also essentially all thrown out as we introduce a new goddess Etro who allegedly is the only thing holding the spacetime continuum together.

But oh no! The bad guy Caius wants to kill the goddess, dooming the entire universe in the process, to save his one friend from a cruel cycle of death and rebirth! Serah and Noel have to stop him. How exactly? Fix the timeline he messed up. But before they can do that, they need to confirm that that is actually what they need to do. And then confirm it again. And I guess keep confirming it repeatedly because nearly every narrative climax in the game culminates in the two heroes going "Oh, looks like we need to fix the timeline. Let's do that!" even though it's literally what they set out to do at the beginning of the game.

This is a very thin plot, but it does give an excuse to have our heroes visit some neat locations across spacetime and then revisit them further ahead in the future to see how their actions have affected them. This is admittedly pretty cool but doesn't make for a story that hangs together very well. If you've ever engaged with a piece of media that decides to take on the task of telling a story steeped in time travel but doesn't really know what it's doing, you know the common pitfalls and many are present here.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is also a story that reeks of contrivances. The writers need Noel to not be up front about his past (though I'm still not sure why exactly other than to drag out the reveal) so of course his memories dun wurk no gud because of um, time travel stuff, I guess? No one else has this issue but you know how it is.

The ending is by far the worst with this stuff. Serah has been "gifted" the ability to see visions of the future just like the many seeresses (all named Yeul) Caius aims to protect. Whenever a Yeul sees a vision, it takes a toll on her body, eventually resulting in them all dying young, usually around the age of 20-25 I think. Serah sees maybe... three? Possibly four visions over the span of a couple years before dying in dramatic fashion from the last one just before the game's end credits. Really? Four? That's all she could handle? Um, ok then.

Also, Caius was a guardian of the goddess, so to speak, before he decided to kill her. This means he has the heart of Etro inside of him. Stabbing the heart apparently kills her. So I'm sorry, why does the plot of this game exist again? In the end he just stabs himself on Noel's blade, killing the goddess as well as himself, so why didn't he just do that from the beginning? Also it seems odd that the goddess would give her most fragile part of her body, her weak point essentially, to the very person who is most likely to be fighting her enemies head on. Seems like poor planning to me, but so does dooming the person you choose to fix the timeline to death by giving her an ability that kills her when she makes changes to the timeline.

Oh and also Lightning gets turned to crystal or something but they decided to not explain why that happened in the main story. It might be explained in DLC content I guess, but I have little interest in digging into that to find out. Hopefully it's explained in the next game.

I want to respect the game for going for a darker ending than most other Final Fantasy games, but it's hard to when so much of it makes so little sense under scrutiny. It has too many contradicting elements, whereas other dark endings in the series (VII and VIII in particular) work because of how vague they are and because they build off of established stakes.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is worth checking out if you enjoyed the gameplay of XIII, but I feel very let down by the thin plot and failure to build off of the previously established world in a satisfying way. It also leans too far to the easy side of difficulty outside of the challenging final boss if you ask me, even on Normal mode. This makes interacting with the paradigm system unrewarding because choosing a strategy that takes longer to carry out results in poorer rewards for battle. It does fix a lot of the issues I and other people had with XIII though, so credit for listening to feedback.

This game tries to fix the missed steps taken with Final Fantasy XIII, and while it does fix some of that, it breaks some others. It looks like Final Fantasy XIII cheap version, with a lot of reused assets (and OST).

Personally, I loved the music, the aesthetics. The game is still linear (in the sense of map dynamics), but now you get to kinda choose where you go first and blahblah.

I think it is unpopular opinion to like Serah, but I did, I was engaged with her journey. Noel also add some extra flavor to the game, and the dynamic between them is nice.

The plot is a little bit convoluted – It tries to overexplain things to the point you are not longer interested. The return of past game characters isn’t really the focus, so

The fact the third party-member is a monster you tame… that… is definitely a bad choice. It is not the first time in a Final Fantasy game you tame monsters for later use, but that the main third characte, in a battle designed for three-character interaction, is a MONSTER… Seriously, was it that hard to create a third character? Top 10 lame decisions in Final Fantasy history.

Did I say I enjoyed the music? Because I freaking loved it!!!

And Caius… is hot. If you don’t agree, SUE ME.

In many ways, Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a product of its circumstances. It (as well as its sequel Lightning Returns (review here)) is a game that mainly exists due to the calamitous launch of Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 doing a lot of damage to the company & the need to recoup the money lost on that disaster somehow, and with Final Fantasy Versus XIII still deep in development hell (and still a couple of years away from being turned into Final Fantasy XV) and XIV being in no position to do so on its own without an expensive ground-up rebuilding of the game, Square ended up deciding that cashing in on the commercial success of Final Fantasy XIII & making a sequel or two to it that heavily reused technology & assets from XIII was the best option.

It is also a product of its circumstances due to its design choices, which were a mix of walking back things people hated about XIII, working within a more limited budget due to Square Enix’s financial troubles at the time (due to the aforementioned failure of FFXIV 1.0 & a then-recent acquisition of Eidos and their studios (ex: Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal) & following design trends of the late 2000s-early 2010s era of gaming. For instance, the linear structure of XIII is replaced with a much more open-ended one where you can play most missions during the middle portion of the game in any order you please (although the cutscenes do feel written with a particular order in mind).

There are also much fewer pre-rendered cinematics than XIII, down to 2 that book-end the story plus a couple of extensions of XIII’s ending cinematic. Whether this decrease is down to budgetary restrictions, the short for an RPG 18-month development cycle leaving little time for more cinematics, a desire to cram the entire game onto a single Xbox 360 DVD (the first game was made with the PS3’s Blu-Ray discs in mind & the 360 port had to be split across 3 DVDs as a result of all the pre-rendered cinematics, and even then they were of a lower resolution, bitrate & different video format than the PS3’s cutscenes (the PS3 & Xbox One backcompat versions have 1080p cutscenes encoded in a proprietary Sony-developed format (reencoded in Bink Video for the Xbox One) while the Xbox 360 & PC have 720p cutscenes in the Bink Video format that are highly compressed)) or a combination of the above is unclear, but the end result is the same.

The visuals, while pretty good for 2011, are also mostly just coasting off of reused assets from XIII (presumably another result of the circumstances of this game’s creation), although what new assets are present are some of the best-looking things in the entire game and do hold up against other games of that year like Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.

The combat is a strange topic for me with regards to this game. On one hand, not much has changed compared to XIII, with the biggest changes being the ability to change party leaders mid-fight & the addition of a Pokemon/Persona-esque monster-catching mechanic (almost certainly to make up for the lack of a character to fill that third slot due to Noel & Serah being the only two protagonists). But on the other hand, I also enjoyed XIII-2’s combat a lot more than XIII’s (I actually rage-quit XIII almost halfway through because of the combat, you can read more about that here). I can’t quite put my finger on why, but I think it’s related to how XIII-2 gives you access to the full potential of its combat system early, whereas XIII consistently leaves you with only two party members until past the halfway point of the game (by which point many players, myself included, will have quit).

As for the story, it’s a significant improvement over XIII. The presence of a clear antagonist throughout the story (whereas XIII didn’t really have one until well into the 2nd act) who has a clear goal helps give the story clearer stakes & a persistent emotional throughline. Said emotional throughline is focused around 3 of this game’s new characters: Noel Kriess (one of the protagonists along with Serah), Caius Ballad (the main antagonist) & Yeul (a young girl who can see the future & changes to the timeline at the cost of a drastically shortened lifespan & eternal reincarnation and Caius’s charge) and made me to tear up numerous times. It’s not perfect, though. This game’s time travel rules are very convoluted (for example, the game makes a big deal about how changing the future changes the past, but they also allow players to revisit timelines that should have been overwritten by such changes. For example, there are two versions of Academia circa 400 AF (AF being short for After the Fall of Cocoon) you can visit in the game & both of them are accessible whenever you please once you’ve unlocked them, presumably for gameplay reasons due to this game’s non-linear structure. Overall I liked it though.

One thing I should note is that the PC port of this game is a mess. It’s unstable, has performance issues no matter what hardware you run & is prone to crashing. Fortunately, though, there are mods out there that fix these issues. This Steam guide should help you get this game to a more stable state on PC. If you’d rather not deal with mods, I’d suggest playing the Xbox 360 version on an Xbox One, One X, Xbox Series X or Series S instead for a better out-of-the-box experience.

Conclusion:

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a step forward from the first game, but is very much an iterative sequel. At least the story is surprisingly good for a game slapped together in less than 2 years to keep a company afloat…

Ratings:

Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 7.5/10

Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 6/10 (pretty good graphics for its day, but the PC port is terrible)

Business Practices score: 6.5/10 (not terrible, but there was a lot of DLC for this game, including some bizarre Assassin’s Creed & Mass Effect crossover costumes)

Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, doesn’t consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 7/10

3.5 ⭐ actual rating.

Another fun entry in the Final Fantasy series! I ended up really enjoying this overall and glad that I plugged the PS3 back in to play it.

I had started this game back when it came out and never finished it. Not because it was bad, but because I wasn't in the mood to play it. I made it maybe 3 hours in and shut it down just because it wasn't time. Well the time finally struck for me to play it and I finished it. It's amazing what playing games when you want to play them, rather than feeling forced to play them, will actually do for your fun factor.

The battle system in this game is amazing. Just like XIII before it, it shows that there is still a place for turn based battles and if developers would try then they can come up with something awesome. It isn't the same as XIII, but the crystarium and paradigms and staggering are all here. Although I will admit that it is difficult to compare the 2 well because it has been years since I have played XIII. You have 2 main characters that you control in this game and you are only in charge of one and you also have a 3 party member that is a monster! And you get to catch the monsters a la Pokemon and decide how you want them to insert themselves into your party. The strategy of the battle system can be as deep or as shallow as you want it. I found myself having a great time coming up with new tactics and how I wanted to set up my team and it's some of the best fun I've had in a battle system in a while.

The story is pretty fun. Sometimes it goes a little out there and I wish I had played XIII closer to this game so I could do a better job of connecting the 2, but alas I just had my poor memories to work with. At its core it's a time travel story, you know, kinda similar to Chrono Trigger. And while at first there was a lot of me shaking my head at Square, when everything came to a head and I realized what they were leading up to, I found myself enjoying the story a lot. The villain of the story was a good one too. I wish he was a little more fleshed out, but I can't help but like the villains that aren't really villians. He was truly doing what he thought was the right thing to do the whole time and wasn't a "bad guy."

Overall I had a great time through this game. I was tempted multiple times to keep playing and go for the platinum trophy, especially since there is a secret ending, but there are just some things I'm not willing to do to get there. While I really enjoyed this game, I could never give it a hard recommend. But if you are interested or just like Final Fantasy it is definitely a fun one to pick up if you are in the mood.

Oh and the final boss kicked my butt initially. Can't help but wonder if I'm getting worse at games....especially since everything I read said I was over leveled...

Anyway! Fun game! And I'm tempted to fire up Lightning Returns somewhat soon to finally finish up the Lightning trilogy.

This review/collection of thoughts is just for the main story. I plan to play at least some of the DLC and collect some more fragments, but I'm heading out of town for a week or so tomorrow and want to jot down my thoughts beforehand.

Characters: While the characters and character interactions were a high point for me in the first game, here it's just kind of a "meh" point. Serah doesn't have as much personality as I'd like for a lead. She's not a bad character, but she really doesn't live up to the cast from 13. Noel, on the other hand, has a lot more personality and is an enjoyable lead. My only complaint is that I wish they would have leaned a lot more heavily into his back story. He's a little too normal of a dude for someone with his origin. The main villain is well done. I love how they tied in and developed Hope. The character design/costumes in this game were... not my favorite.

Story: I love time travel stories, and this was no exception. It wasn't a particularly cerebral story, but it stuck to it's premise and delivered something that was a lot of fun. I was never as emotional invested in it as I would have liked, but it kept my curious and delivered some good punches at the end. Definitely has me excited to play the DLC and Lightning Returns when I get back.

Battle: Honestly, a huge step back from FF13 in my eyes. The couple of things that they improved just didn't make up for the missteps. In FF13, the fastest and most effective way to finish battles generally involved the use of saboteurs and synergists. If things got hairy, I needed sentinels (well, only in a few places... ) and medics. Staggering enemies quickly and maximizing stagger damage was important. In 13-2, synergists and saboteurs are immensely less effective (and wouldn't be particularly needed otherwise...), to the point that I essentially didn't touch them. I needed sentinels even less than in the first game, and even many boss fights could be won quickly enough that medics weren't necessary. So, the class coverage went from 5.5/6 to like 2.5/6 in any give battle.

The game was simply too easy. I heard this beforehand, so I purposefully dodged fights regularly to try to stunt my growth. Unfortunately, this wasn't always possible (cie'th city was the worst ugh) and I ended up overpowered regardless. After the bitch of a final boss fight in FF13, sailing right through the final bosses with only a single moment of danger was a big disappointment.

Music: All over the place in the best of ways. The nu-metal screamo-ish themes for some of the bosses and chocobos had me grinning like an idiot. There were vocal themes that had strong Nier/Nier Automata vibes to them, which I absolutely loved. The battle themes ranged from wistful electronica to metal adjacent prog rock with some kickin violins. Honestly, the music is a large part of what bumped this game from 3 stars to 4 stars for me. So damn fun and good

Monsters: My other favorite part of this game. I love collecting and breeding monsters, and I enjoyed the little bit I dabbled in here. I kept myself from going too far down the rabbit hole, due to the aformentioned lack of difficulty, but I'm looking forward to playing with it some more during the post game content. Putting newsboy caps on killer robots was a particular highlight for me. Also, Flanitors cracked me up in FF13, and having them actually be a useful member of my time was double plus good.

Linearity: Exact opposite of FF13. I honestly enjoyed the linearity of 13, but this is a damn time travel game. I had a lot of fun popping in and doing a side quest here and there at different points in history. Grabbing the fragments for lore is fun too, and I'm looking forward to finding more.

Graphics: Big step back from 13, but not bad at all for 2011.

Fun Factor: Here's the thing. The game was just fun. Yeah, I think it was worse in most of the more 'serious' elements as compared to 13. But, I had fun almost every step of the way. There were several moments in the game that had me laughing, and a bunch that had me going "That's rad".

Length: The 25ish hours it took me to beat the main story (plus a couple of side areas) were spot on, and I feel satisfied but eager to do some of the side content. That is exactly what I like to feel when I finish the game. Far too many JRPGs overstay their welcome, and I'm so glad this series doesn't.

Conclusion: One of the most enjoyable Final Fantasy games, and a very solid JRPG in general. I have a feeling the soundtrack will find its way to my regular playlists.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is the direct sequel to the hot garbage known as Final Fantasy XIII. I would have never guessed that I would have had so much fun with FFXIII-2 after my soul-draining experience with FFXIII. It is no exaggeration that Square Enix took fan feedback from the first game close to their hearts and did a thorough a 180° with this game. In fact, Square Enix made such drastic measures that they retconned the ending of FFXIII and pretty much wrote away most of the L’Cie, Fal’Cie and focus jargon. This is one of the few games I’ve played where the sequel is so much better than its’ predecessor that you could just pretend that the first game never existed (another game series that comes to mind is Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2).

The story takes place directly after FFXIII and changes the ending. Instead of Lightning reuniting with her sister Serah, Lightning is literally erased from history and everyone believes that she sacrificed herself along with Vanille and Fang to save the inhabitants of Cocoon. The only person that seems to remember what truly happened is Serah. The cause of all this is Caius, a man in a purple jumpsuit and wields a cool looking sword eye weapon who has manipulated time itself for some nefarious purpose. It is up to Serah and Noel, a mysterious time traveler from the future to fix the time paradoxes and confront Caius. As a time travel story, the game completely misses the mark and tries to explain mysterious things because of “time magic”. Fortunately at least what FFXIII-2’s story has going for it is that it is at least mildly comprehensible with no need to consult the Datalog. There are also nice episodic recaps everytime you load your save.

In the first hour of gameplay you can tell Square Enix immediately did right with this game. Characters no longer spout non sequiturs at each other. There are multiple branching paths to explore. You can actually talk and have conversations with NPCs! And finally you can access most of the gameplay immediately with the rest unlocking within the first three hours.

The Paradigm system from FFXIII also got a revamp. Serah and Noel will always be in your party, with a rotating slot used for monsters. That’s right, FFXIII-2 is also a Pokėmon-esk monster collecting game! Each monster represents a specific Crystarium role and it becomes a quest in itself to find and raise the best Commandos, Ravagers, Medics, etc. That said if you didn’t enjoy the Paradigm system in the first game, this game will not be changing your mind.

I was not a fan of some of the other changes that Square Enix has made. For some reason they learned that that QTEs are pretty popular with the kids these days and included them throughout the game. The QTEs show up in cutscenes and during battle. Hitting every QTE will deal bonus damage or reward you with a special prize. Fortunately failing the QTEs isn’t an automatic fail. Another feature included is branching dialog sequences. While branching dialog is much appreciated as it helps flesh out Serah and Noel, it usually only rewards an item if you pick the one correct/serious choice..

There are also severe pacing issues with FFXIII-2.The first 4 episodes are fairly easy and straightforward to follow. The 5th episode is gated off until Serah and Noel collect 5 specific fragments located in various timelines.The game give you hints in which timelines and areas to find these fragments, but the problem is, the game does not tell you how. In order to reach these specific timelines, you need to have enough Wild Artefacts, the keys to opening these timelines. The game never keeps track of which locations have Wild Artefacts are in them and it becomes painfully annoying to scour through each and every timeline for them. The problem is also exacerbated when these Wild Artefacts are impossible to access without pursuing some relatively long quest lines. Unless if by dumb luck you opened the right timelines and did the right quests, I strongly recommend resorting to a guide if you get stuck at this point.

FFXIII-2 suffers from a low production value and most of the content is recycled from the original game. The new music is eclectic and random and doesn’t quite feel like a Final Fantasy soundtrack.There are some catchy tracks like the Red Chocobo song, but also random ones like this heavy metal song they put in some boss fights. Most of the character models and monsters are recycled from the original. Voice acting with the exception of the main cast is shotty with Mog being the most annoying to listen to. Lip syncing is poorly done and you can notice characters moving their lips but not matching what they’re saying.

The poor production values also creep their way onto the PC port of the game. On Windows 10, the game will crash within the first few minutes of gameplay due to a memory issue. The framerate advertised to run up to 60 FPS, regularly dips down to 30 FPS even on powerful rigs. I experienced no issues playing FFXIII on PC so it’s strange how all of these bugs happen with the sequel. Luckily there is a great FF fan community that has provided most of the fixes to these issues (see: https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XIII-2). It is a shame that Square Enix did not patch their game even though it has been released almost 4 years ago and counting.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 feels like a game that took major risks and paid off. Rather than living in the shadow of the first game and playing it safe, Square Enix decided to take the series into a whole new direction with this sequel. The game oozes with new ideas, some brilliant and some awful. This is a game that is so different from its’ predecessor that saying it is the sequel to Final Fantasy XIII is an insult. Yes, it is using the same main characters and battle system, but it does so much more than the original. Despite my complaints, I enjoyed my time playing Final Fantasy XIII-2 look forward to playing the end of the trilogy: Lightning Returns.

(This would have been a 4 star rating if not for the terrible job Square Enix did with the PC port of this game)

Fue una gran sorpresa para mi descubrir que me había enamorado de Final Fantasy XIII-2. No tenía razones para sospechar que esto iba a ocurrir pues su predecesor, Final Fantasy XIII, me había parecido un juego... “aceptable”. Un RPG que no destacaba en casi ningún aspecto y que a pesar de una muy positiva crítica inicial, pronto se convirtió en una de las ovejas negras de la saga a causa de su aburrido diseño de niveles, excesiva linealidad, poco inspirada historia y personajes que no conectaron con buena parte del público.

No voy a negar que yo disfruté bastante de algunos elementos de ese juego, específicamente su estratégico y profundo sistema de combate y un par de personajes con los que me encariñe... pero definitivamente no puedo decir que me haya fascinado ni que haya sido especialmente memorable. En conclusión, no me encontraba especialmente interesado en probar su secuela, y creo que esa falta de expectativas ayudó a que me impactara tanto.

A nivel de jugabilidad lo mejor que tiene FFXIII-2 es que hereda el sistema de combate de FFXIII y lo mejora. Solo hay dos personajes cuyos roles (curador, guerrero, mago, buffer, debuffer o defensor) pueden cambiar en cualquier momento de acuerdo a configuraciones completamente personalizables convirtiendo todos los encuentros, especialmente contra los jefes, en verdaderos retos de estrategia llenos de tensión. Creo que desde que jugué el primer Dark Souls no sentía esa emoción de combatir una y otra vez contra un jefe, mejorando con cada intento hasta derrotarlo con una técnica perfecta.

OK, mentí, no son solo dos personajes, hay un tercer personaje que puede ser llenado por cualquiera de los enemigos que hayamos “capturado”, que tienen roles y movimientos específicos y a los cuales entrenamos y mejoramos como si de Pokemones se trataran, añadiendo un elemento de coleccionismo y variedad increíblemente adictivo y que aporta MUCHÍSIMO a las estrategias de combate y a la duración del juego. Yo me atoré en el jefe final del juego por un largo rato (de hecho, me atoré en varios jefes) y fue gracias a los cambios que hice en estrategia y monstruos que eventualmente pude derrotarlo. Amo la sensación que causa superar retos de esta forma.

El mundo que exploramos es una respuesta directa a las críticas que se habían hecho contra FFXIII. De esos limitados pasillos que estábamos obligados a explorar en un orden estricto pasamos a una colección de niveles mucho más abiertos, con muchas zonas opcionales y a los que se suma la posibilidad de viajar en el tiempo (y en algún caso, el clima), lo que cambia bastante el aspecto, estructura y objetivos de los escenarios, ofreciendo mucha libertad para avanzar en la historia, hacer sidequests o distraernos con mini-juegos.

Todo esto está muy bien, pero lo que en verdad hizo que este juego me fascinara en la forma en que lo hizo es su trama. OK, lo acepto su planteamiento es innecesariamente complejo y serpentino, involucrando paradojas temporales, dimensiones paralelas e intervenciones divinas que no siempre tienen sentido (casi nunca tienen sentido). Lightning desaparece tras los eventos del juego anterior convertida en un avatar de una diosa en el mundo por el que pasan los espíritus de los muertos, allí se enfrenta a un misterioso guerrero que quiere “destruirlo todo” y envía a un joven llamado Noel a un viaje por el tiempo a buscar a su hermana Serah con un propósito no discutido.

Juntos, Noel y Serah viajan a través de Pulse y Cocoon, cambiando el pasado para lograr un futuro en que Lightning esté con ella y ambos mundos no sean destruidos.

Si, es prácticamente un cliché de las historias de viajes temporales... pero a diferencia de la gran mayoría de ellas aquí los protagonistas se dan cuenta que su propósito de salvar la humanidad no se dará simplemente con cambiar algo en el pasado, salvar una vida, convencer a alguien de algo o evitar algún pequeño suceso que desencadena un apocalipsis. No. Final Fantasy XIII-2 deja claro que crear un mejor futuro no es una tarea fácil, sino algo que requiere del esfuerzo y dedicación de mucha gente que sin egoísmo ni atajos se dedique a hacer el mundo un lugar mejor para todos.

Esto está representado mediante “La Academia”, una organización liderada por uno de los personajes del juego anterior (el más fastidioso de ellos y que aquí se convierte en uno de los mejores) y que se dedica a la investigación, estudio y mejora del mundo que ahora habitan. Esta es una subversión absoluta de uno de los más grandes clichés de los JRPG, el que dice que todas las grandes organizaciones son malévolas por naturaleza (bueno, en el mundo real lo son). Gracias al viaje en el tiempo vemos los esfuerzos y logros de la academia a través no de los años, sino de los siglos, y cuando los vemos equivocarse no se aferran a sus métodos e ideas como cabría esperar, sino que aprenden de ellos y cambian para mejorar. Esta es una visión realmente esperanzadora y sin duda uno de los principales elementos que me hizo enamorar de este juego.

El juego también maneja otros temas más comunes en el sci-fi y la fantasía, preguntándose si el sufrimiento de unos pocos justifica la salvación de muchos, los caprichos de los dioses, los humanos que se someten a ellos buscando una salida fácil y los efectos colaterales de cambiar el futuro. Si, son familiares, pero están bien manejados en el contexto de la aventura y apoyan su tema principal de trabajar fuerte y sacrificarse por el bien de la humanidad...

...

Hasta el final del juego.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 tiene un final muy bizarro, un giro de último momento que amenaza con deshacer todos los logros de nuestros héroes y dejar al mundo en una situación aún peor que la que buscaban solucionar. Todo para crear un cliffhanger que guíe la historia hacia Lightning Returns, el siguiente juego de la saga.

Aunque este final no altera mi opinión sobre lo grandioso del juego y lo positivo de sus temas, si me presenta un conflicto. Narrativamente, el juego parece querer decir que el esfuerzo tan grande de La Academia y los protagonistas fue en vano, que no vale la pena luchar por mejorar la vida de los demás... sin embargo este mensaje tan oscuro contrasta tan fuertemente con el resto del juego que me inclino a pensar que los efectos de este final en la historia no fueron bien considerados en contexto del resto de ella y que fue hecho así simplemente para justificar el “Continuará” que aparece luego en la pantalla.

O al menos... quiero engañarme de esa manera, porque no quiero aceptar que el destino de estos personajes sea tan oscuro.