Just finished up FFXIII-2 after 2 hours on the final boss because I guess I was under-leveled since I didn't do a ton of the side stuff and just stuck to the main story.
Errr...that was...really good? Like, yeah, that was a pretty darn good rpg. Color me surprised as heck. The battle system is actually pretty awesome even though you'd never know until the last dungeon/final bosses where the difficulty jumps from 5->11 and forces you to learn all the kinks of the battle systems and play GOOD STRATEGY. The battle system is really intense in those final battles, holy shit. Was sweating on that last boss after getting wiped a couple of times from not being fast enough. The whole final dungeon/battles are about speed and how the battle system really is made for quick detailed strategy to take the enemies out as fast as possible while buffing/healing and overall staying alive. Felt good on those final mega-flares to go from def/buff/heal -> def/def/def and lock into an all-guard right before it hits and then quickly heal -> counter with action.
Outside of the battle system, the main story pacing was pretty damn good. Very quick paced game that was exciting and fun and gave enough exploration to keep it interesting. The difficulty balance sucks though and it's too easy then WAY TOO HARD (jesus christ the behomeths in the final dungeon that one hit wipe your whole team when standing). Dungeons are fun enough, the one dungeon with enemies every 10 steps for 90 mins was TERRIBLE and the worst part of the game, but the rest were fun. Even the final dungeon was neat and a change of pace.
Didn't like the random battles because sometimes the encounter rate was bullshit and you couldn't interact with objects/people when enemies were on screen.
Graphics were rough and unpolished but still really gorgeous looking game. At times I almost couldn't tell if the cutscenes were CG or real-time and could only tell they were real-time because they'd wear the costumes I had set on. I really loved the music, nice piano, a bit Persona 3/4ish mixed with FF tunes. The overall presentation was really good. Great cutscene direction too.
And the story was...better than I expected hearing people say it was worse than FFXIII's story! It's very Japanese and out there and I can see why people call it anime-ish, but it's fun even if a bit ridiculous and the characters are actually really likeable this time around, both protags and antags. That in itself makes it a lot more enjoyable than XIII where everyone outside the main cast was one-dimensional and terrible. Caius was actually one of the better antagonist in an FF in a while, was a decent dude even if he was just kind of Zack/Sephiroth combined. Liked the ending too. XIII's story was wtf and stupid and the only thing it had going was some interesting world lore and some of the main characters had nice development; XIII-2's story is ridiculous, but it's straight-forward and easy to understand without all kinds of garbage terms, just a fantasy/sci-fi short time-traveling story adventure. Fun and entertaining like a good popcorn movie. For a 20-25 hour rpg, I was really happy with it.
Liked that the pokemon monster thing required no extra effort and you just random get monsters at the end of battle. Like that there is a nice open-ness to the game where you can run around the different areas time-traveling and doing quests. Didn't like that the quests were all pretty boring fetch quests that usually required just running across the map to get some items and then you get NOTHING for doing the quests since the fragments do jack shit besides some database info and 200xp; which is why after doing all the quests in the first few locations I gave up and just finished the main story. Still, I like that stuff is there for me to do if I feel like it.
There's not a ton of a areas, but the level design in each of them is pretty good and the different versions of them sometimes were interesting like seeing a happy place and then exploring its ruins 400 years later.
When I first started playing XIII-2 when it came out I got like 5-10 hours in and I still had no idea what the game was or what I was doing. The game is very weird, but creative, and most of the stuff is well designed and done with a light-hearted fun touch. Really feels like the staff had some beers and just made a fun rpg. Back then when I was early on in the game I thought it was alright, but nowhere near the amazingly great game that FFX-2 is. Having finished it now, I still think X-2 is a notch better, but that's because the X world is a more interesting and fleshed out one to explore. XIII-2 is super rough, maybe if it had another year of development it'd be as good as X-2, but even rough it's still pretty good and one of the better rpgs I've played in a while. The final dungeon and final bosses, though a bit bullshit if you aren't overleveled, really brought my opinion of the game up a good deal; had way more intense epic rpg fun tonight with the endgame XIII-2 stuff than the endgame of SMTIV, and that was unexpected! (SMTIV's still a way better game, but XIII-2 has better final bosses).
Will get to Lightning Returns later this year. Actually kind of looking forward to it now. But plan is to finish more backlog rpgs in the first half of this year. Next up: Finishing The Witcher! (and playing Nier)
