Final Fantasy XIII-2

Final Fantasy XIII-2 (ファイナルファンタジーXIII-2 Fainaru Fantajī Sātīn Tsū) is a console role-playing video game developed and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was produced by Square Enix's 1st Production Department, with help from external developer tri-Ace. The game was released in 2011 in Japan and 2012 in North America and PAL regions. Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a direct sequel to the 2010 role playing game, Final Fantasy XIII, taking place three years after its events and Square Enix's second sequel. Lightning, the protagonist of the original game, has disappeared into an unknown world. Her younger sister Serah Farron, a returning character, and a young man named Noel Kreiss attempt to find Lightning.
Development of Final Fantasy XIII-2 began in April 2010 and lasted 18 months. The game was unveiled at the Square Enix 1st Production Department Premier in January 2011. tri-Ace was hired to help with the game design, art and programming. The development team wanted to exceed Final Fantasy XIII in every aspect and make the story's tone mysterious and darker than the previous sequels. The game adds the Paradigm Shift system used in Final Fantasy XIII, and also includes elements from other series such as airship, chocobos, the Active Time Battle system and a bestiary. The game's theme song for the Xbox 360 and North American, European and Australian PlayStation 3 releases is "New World" by Charice, while Japanese and Asian PlayStation 3 releases is "Yakusoku no Basho" (約束の場所, "The Place of Promise") by Mai Fukui.
==Gameplay==
The player directly controls the on-screen character through a third-person perspective to interact with people, objects, and enemies throughout the game, just as in Final Fantasy XIII. The player can also turn the camera around the characters, which allows for a 360° view of the surroundings. The world of Final Fantasy XIII-2 is rendered to scale relative to the characters in it; instead of a caricature of the character roaming around miniature terrain, as found in the earlier Final Fantasy games, every area is represented proportionally. The player navigates the world by foot or by Chocobo. The game world is divided up into multiple regions and times, and includes both different regions at the same time and the same region at different times. Connecting these regions is the Historia Crux, which the player can access at will. The game regions are not accessed linearly, but instead are represented as a branching path. New regions can be unlocked via plot points or by acquiring optional special items, and the player may transfer between unlocked regions at any point.
When a player accesses a region they had previously visited, they appear where they were before leaving. Upon acquiring items called seals, players can revert regions to how they were before the player visited in order to play through them again; regions can be unsealed again at any time. Unlike in the prequel, the game is automatically saved when players enter the Historia Crux, as well as at key moments in the plot. Players may also manually save at any time. Instead of accessing stores at save points like in XIII, they can purchase items from a character named Chocolina, who is found throughout the game. An in-game datalog provides a bestiary and incidental information about the world of Final Fantasy XIII-2.
When talking to characters, the game sometimes begins the Live Trigger system, in which the player chooses their response based on up to four choices; these dialogue options are generally not repeatable. The game also on occasion features temporal rifts, in which the player must complete a puzzle in order to close the rift and continue the game.
===Combat Systems===
As in Final Fantasy XIII, the game uses a variation of the Active Time Battle (ATB) system known as the Command Synergy Battle system, which makes use of the Paradigm Shift system. Monsters no longer freely roam the map like in Final Fantasy XII and XIII, but instead randomly appear like in previous Final Fantasy games. For a limited time after monsters appear, the player may attack them to gain a combat bonus; after this window expires, the monsters attack the player to begin a regular battle, and if too much time passes before combat begins the player is restricted from restarting the battle during combat. The game has both normal and easy modes. When the battle begins, the screen transitions from the regular map to a separate battle screen as in XIII. Three characters are used in battle—the two main characters and a monster. These monsters must be captured from battles before they can be used. Captured monsters act just like the main characters, but can also perform a feral link attack that increases the chance of capturing a monster. Either of the two main characters can be selected as the one that the player has direct control over at any point; the other character and the monster are then controlled by the game's artificial intelligence.
Combat itself is almost identical to the previous game's Active Time Battle (ATB) system. Under this system, the player selects an action from the menus, such as Attack, Magic, and Item. Each action requires a specific number of slots on the ATB bar, which continually refills to a set maximum number of slots. The ATB bar gradually increases in size throughout the game from two slots to five. The player may select less than the maximum number of possible actions or may stop the filling of the ATB bar and perform as many actions as can be done with the current ATB amount. The player may select an autobattle command, which fills the ATB slots with actions chosen automatically. Actions cannot be performed outside of battle, and the characters' health is fully restored after each battle. During some battles, players are put through quick time events called Cinematic Actions which allows them to deal higher damage to foes and end certain battles.
Each enemy has a meter, called a chain counter, consisting of a percentage starting at 100 which increases when the enemy is struck by attacks or spells. Attacks by different roles have different effects; some raise the chain by a larger amount while others give the player longer before the chain counter resets. The amount of damage performed by an attack is multiplied by the chain percentage before it is applied to the enemy. When the chain counter reaches a preset amount, different for each enemy, the enemy is placed into Stagger State. In this mode, the enemy has lowered defense and may be launched into the air. The Paradigm system allows the player to program six different roles which the characters can then assume to perform certain formations in battle in response to the specific conditions.
The roles consist of Commando, a warrior-type role; Ravager, a black mage-type role which uses damage-dealing magic; Medic, a White Mage-type role which can heal; Saboteur, which can weaken enemies; Synergist, which can strengthen allies; and Sentinel, which has protective abilities. Each of the two main characters can initially take on only three roles, but can learn the others at the player's choosing as the game progresses. The player can select which roles the controlled character and the AI characters are using both outside and during battle, which is the only way that the player can control the AI characters during battle. The player can only choose from specific sets of paradigms that the player has set up beforehand outside of battle. Monsters only have one role, different monsters are used when the player switches paradigms. The player selects up to three monsters they wish to use in paradigms outside of battle. Unlike in Final Fantasy XIII, the player cannot summon Eidolons to fight.
==Plot==
===Characters===
Final Fantasy XIII-2 is set within the world of Gran Pulse, which is split between the surface world of Pulse and the previously floating sphere of Cocoon, now held in the sky by a giant crystal pillar. The game begins three years after the ending to Final Fantasy XIII, in which a team of six people stopped Cocoon from being destroyed. To this end, two of the characters, Oerba Dia Vanille and Oerba Yun Fang, formed part of the crystal pillar that supports Cocoon to save the people who were inside. One other member of the party, Lightning, is believed by almost everyone to have not survived, but her sister Serah Farron remembers her standing on Pulse with her and the party members Snow Villiers, Hope Estheim, and Sazh Katzroy before abruptly disappearing. Serah, along with Noel Kreiss, a young man originally from 700 years in the future, are the two main characters of the game. Other characters include Caius Ballad, the game's primary antagonist; Paddra Nsu-Yeul, a seeress, and Alyssa Zaidelle, a young girl who works as an assistant to Hope.
===Story===
The game opens three years after the fall of Cocoon, noted in-game as 3 AF, as the Pulse town Serah lives in is attacked by monsters. A stranger named Noel appears to save the town, and claims to be a time traveler from 700 AF. He arrived in 3 AF via Valhalla, a realm at the end of time, where he claims to have met Lightning guarding the throne of the goddess Etro, who, according to myth, created humanity. As part of Lightning's transfer to Valhalla, paradoxes have erupted throughout time, enabling time travel between specific time periods via the Historia Crux and modifying history. Serah joins Noel to resolve these paradoxes, she hoping to find her sister and he hoping to change the bleak future he was from.
They first journey to Cocoon in 5 AF, where they meet Alyssa and stop a giant war robot from the future, and then move on to that Yaschas Massif on Pulse in 10 AF. There they find Hope as the leader of the Academy with Alyssa as his assistant, and a recording of prophecies made by the line of seeresses of Paddra, believed to have died out centuries prior. One fragmented prophecy shows Lightning in Valhalla. The city of Paddra is shrouded by an eclipse, which Noel says is not supposed to happen for another few centuries. While Serah and Noel resolve the paradox, they encounter Caius, who Noel knows from 700 AF and who opposes them in changing the timeline; and Yeul, who looks identical a girl named Yeul that Noel knew in the future. After resolving the paradox, a new region opens in the Historia Crux, 1X AF Paddra, an alternate timeline in which there was never an eclipse in 10 AF. The prophecy now shows Caius in Valhalla fighting Lightning, as well as the pillar supporting Cocoon collapsing. Noel claims that this takes place around 400 AF, and devastates the human population as well as the world, resulting in the extinction of the species by his own time. Serah and Noel move on, while Hope and Alyssa work on preventing the pillar's collapse.
In 300 AF Cocoon, the pair find Snow, Serah's fiancé, who disappeared from 3 AF while searching for Lightning. He is fighting a giant paradox-fueled monster that is dissolving the crystal pillar. After resolving the paradox, which delays the fall of Cocoon until 500 AF, Snow disappears again as an anomaly from another time, much to Serah's dismay. The pair then go to the city of Academia on Pulse in 400 AF, where they are attacked by the citizens transformed into Cie'th by the city's Proto fal'Cie, which claims they were killed in a tower in 200 AF after learning a "forbidden history". After the Yeul of that time dies, Noel and Serah go to the Augusta Tower in 200 AF, where they discover that Hope, in order to prevent Cocoon's destruction, made the Proto fal'Cie Adam in 13 AF to help keep Cocoon afloat. A paradox, in turn, caused the Proto fal'Cie's AI to lose control, kill Hope and Alyssa, and take control of the Academy. The paradox is resolved when Hope in 1X AF sees a prophecy of the pair fighting Adam and decides not to build it, creating an alternate Academia in 4XX AF. In this world, the pair find Hope and Alyssa again, who had put themselves in stasis after building Augusta Tower. They explain their new plan to build a new man-made Cocoon to hold humanity, which Serah and Noel help with before departing again.
However, Alyssa betrays Noel and Serah and leads them into Caius's trap, due to being a living paradox doomed to disappear as a result of them fixing the timeline. Separated from Noel in the Void Beyond, Serah meets several Yeuls from throughout history, who explain that she is the seeress of Paddra, continually reincarnated throughout history, while Caius is her immortal guardian. She explains that every time the timeline is changed, the resulting shock kills her; Caius has been driven mad by watching her die over and over, now seeking to stop it by unleashing the chaos trapped in Valhalla by Etro to destroy all time. Serah, who has been seeing flashes every time a paradox is resolved, is also a seeress, and risks death every time she changes the future. Caius battles Serah and traps her in a dream world just as he did with Noel. After breaking free of hers with help from Fang and Vanille, Serah frees Noel from his, in which he is the last living human after his version of Yeul dies and Caius abandons them for Valhalla. The pair meets with Lightning in a future New Bodhum in 700 AF before confronting Caius, first in Academia in 500 AF and then in Valhalla. After they defeat him, he transforms into Jet Bahamut before Serah and Noel are saved by Lightning. After his final defeat, Caius claims to have killed Lightning in their last battle and that his death will kill the weakened Etro. Noel refuses to kill his former mentor but Caius forces his blade through himself. When Serah and Noel return to Academia in 500 AF, Cocoon has fallen and Hope's new Cocoon "Bhunivelze" has risen. Serah dies from the shock in front of Noel due to the future changing, before a black cloud erupts from the sky as the chaos that Etro was keeping trapped erupts out to destroy all of time and makes the world in Valhalla's image. Lightning can be seen in Etro's temple, sitting on the goddess's throne, crystallized.
==Development==
Development of Final Fantasy XIII-2 began in April 2010 and lasted 18 months. In March 2010, three months after the release of Final Fantasy XIII, Yoshinori Kitase, producer for the game, said in an interview "If we could do a XIII-2, we could direct all our attention to the story and refine what we have already built." Director Motomu Toriyama stated in the October 2010 Ultimania Omega companion book that he hoped to write a story "where Lightning ends up happy", though at the time Square Enix had no plans to make a sequel. Two months later on December 15, 2010, however, Tetsuya Nomura, main character designer for the original game, released a drawing of Lightning along with the words "She must not be forgotten". On January 11, 2011, Square Enix registered the domain name FinalFantasy13-2game.com via a proxy company that it had used to register websites for several other unannounced games.
The game was officially announced at the Square Enix 1st Production Department Premier in Tokyo on January 18, 2011. The teaser trailer showed Lightning, outfitted in armor, drawing her weapon and engaging Caius, who was not named. Many of the key designers remained in their roles from the previous game, with Toriyama, Kitase, Nomura, and Isamu Kamikokuryo staying as director, producer, character designer, and art director. The moogle was designed by Toshitaka Matsuda. Unlike the prequel the game was not entirely developed in-house; developer tri-Ace was contracted to help out with aspects of game design, art and programming.
Square Enix Europe stated that they wanted to make a sequel that "exceeds Final Fantasy XIII in every aspect". Unlike Final Fantasy X-2, which had a more cheerful and humorous feel than Final Fantasy X, the development team wanted the overall tone of the story of Final Fantasy XIII-2 to be darker and more mysterious than the original. Director Motomu Toriyama said that considering Vanille and Fang are gone and the world is in a state where Cocoon had fallen, there is no way for the new story to be totally peaceful. Yoshinori Kitase, the producer, remarked that the story would have the serious feel of a true numbered entry in the Final Fantasy series.
On June 2, 2011, two in-game screenshots from the English version of the game were released in relation to E3. They showed Serah as a returning character with a new costume and a new male character named Noel. One of the screens showed Serah and Noel engaged in battle, with Serah as the playable party leader. GameSpot released an exclusive teaser trailer for the game the next day, showing more characters and a glimpse of the battle system. There were two demos presented at E3: One where Serah and Noel deal with a giant boss called Atlas and other having Lightning riding her Eidolon Odin and fighting an alternate existence of the Eidolon Bahamut.
In August 2011, a new trailer was released at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. It depicted further gameplay and cutscenes, as well as a figure appearing to be Hope from Final Fantasy XIII, using his Airwing boomerang to aid Serah and Noel. In the following September, two new trailers were released for the 2011 Tokyo Game Show, one entitled "Promise", the other entitled "Despair". Both were released in English and Japanese. New footage included Hope and Snow returning from the previous game, and the appearance of Paddra Nsu-Yeul. Extensive footage of Caius in battle with Lightning was also shown. October 2011 saw the release of the trailer, Change the Future, made specially for New York Comic Con. This trailer elaborated on how Lightning went to Valhalla, and further showcased Caius, Yeul, Snow, and Hope. A 7 minute trailer entitled New Adventures chronicled much of the new battle system and elaborated on the new Historia Crux system was also released. In December 2011, the Battle in Valhalla trailer further showcased Caius and his abilities, and showed numerous shots of Lightning in battle with him.
To promote the game's upcoming release in Japan, AKB48 member Yuko Oshima was appointed the leader of a group of thirteen official test players.
==Reception==
During its first week of release in Japan, Final Fantasy XIII-2 sold 524,000 copies, and the PlayStation 3 version was the highest-selling game for the system. The Xbox 360 version only reached 48th, largely due to the low number of Xbox 360 customers in Japan. Although high, initial sales were notably lower than what they were for the game's predecessor, which sold 1.5 million units in its first week. By the end of the year, the game had sold over 697,000 units, making it the fifth best-selling 2011 game in Japan. It was just below four handheld video games, making it the highest-selling home console game in Japan that year. By the beginning of March 2012, the game had sold 811,000 copies in Japan, with 798,000 of those for the PS3 and 13,000 for the Xbox 360. In the United States, the game sold 350,000 copies in its first month, making it the second best-selling game of February 2012, just below Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. In the United Kingdom, Final Fantasy XIII-2 became the best-selling game of February 2012, just above Metal Gear Solid HD Collection. As of March 9, 2012, the game has sold 1,161,000 units in Japan and the United States.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 received very favorable reviews by Japanese reviewers after release, getting perfect scores from the Japanese magazines Famitsu and Dengeki PlayStation. Famitsu editor Ranbu Yoshida said that "it feels like a very different game from its predecessor" and that "it's easy to lose yourself in changing and redoing areas you've previously finished." Assistant editor Norihiro Fujiwara added that "the setting and presentation is fantastic, and the issues people brought up with the first game—its linearity, its lack of meaty gameplay—are a thing of the past. You're sucked into the game right from the beginning, and the story's very easy to get into." Dengeki awarded the game an S rating, the highest rating given by the magazine.
The game received mostly positive reviews from Western critics, who primarily focused on the changes in the game from its prequel. Official Xbox Magazine said that it "repairs almost every problem with Final Fantasy XIII, delivering an experience that feels like what that original game should have been" and that "FFXIII-2 will restore your excitement for the franchise's future." Game Informer praised the player-driven progression, entertaining combat and other adjustments that make it one of their "favorite RPGs from a mechanical perspective," but criticized the story. PlayStation: The Official Magazine, on the other hand, praised the story as an "emotional tale" with "a superb cast of characters" and "so much heart" but criticized the "shallow filler content" and "artificial mechanics."
It was listed as one of "The Top PS3 Games of 2012" by 1UP.com.
==Links==
*FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 Official Japanese website (Japanese)
*FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 Judge 13 - Official Test Players website (Japanese)
*FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 Official North American website (English)
*Final Fantasy XIII-2 Official European website (English)
Category:2011 video games
Category:2012 video games
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