Written by: Alex

 

 

 

For a franchise of it stature, the first Final Fantasy XIII was met with a surprisingly tepid response. Its visual splendour and involved battle system were enough to catch people attention, but a restrictive linear path through the game (and often overly challenging battles) soured even some die-hard fans. Now developer Square Enix are returning to the world of XIII with "Final Fantasy XIII-2", with the clear intention of addressing fan complaints. With a streamlined battle system along with an open and varied world, they certainly seem to have got the message, but I worry these tweaks will not be enough to draw me in after XIII’s inability to capture my attention.

 

 

Final Fantasy XIII-2’s story is an incredibly simple at its core, but with enough twists and turns to rapidly confuse if you are not paying attention. Picking up three years after XIII, most of the original cast have disbanded leaving Lightening (the star of the original game) living in Valhalla as warrior for the goddess Etro, and her sister Serah (who spent most of XIII as a crystal) living in the small village of New Bodhum.

 

In Valhalla Lightening is locked in a battle with an agent of chaos, which is fracturing the time continuum. Enter Noel (when I say ‘enter’ you can read fall from the sky), a young man from the future. Seizing this opportunity to communicate with those outside Valahalla, Lightening sends Noel to find Serah and help restore the order of time. So almost as soon as he makes his entrance Noel is off again, travelling back in time to New Bodhum. Finding Serah he convinces her that Lightening is alive and the two set off through time.

 

Really that is all you need to know, but along the journey new and old characters are constantly introduced providing a twists and layers to events. Noel’s hope to save the future join with Serah’s desire to find Lightening, and the two young heroes begin to trust each other.

 

 

What struck me about the story was just how involved it required I be. Characters in hub areas are constantly talking to Noel and Serah, offering quests or incidental dialogue. This is combined with chatter between the lead characters gave a depth to the world and their motivations that drew me in more than I ever expected from what is at its core a saccharine sweet Japanese melodrama.

 

 

The structure enabled by XIII-2’s time based hi-jinx is a cunning solution many of Final Fantasy XIII’s problems. Within about four hours of starting the game Serah and Noel were skipping back and forth through time almost at will opening the game up and completely eliminating any sense of linearity.

 

All of the games locations hold a number of time gates, each of which links to another era. To open a gate artefacts must be discovered, and it is this that provides the moment-to-moment drive of the game as the pair fight their way through area to various items to enable their journey to continue. But with multiple gates come a multitude of possibilities, ensuring that while there is some order, events can unfurl in a number of ways.

 

 

Entering new areas often sees Noel and Serah thrown in to a town hub, filled with side-missions and characters to interact with. Most inhabitants of the world offer some small interaction or line of dialogue that adds tone to the new environment, while others (marked with exclamation marks) provide deeper information and quests.

 

During more involved dialogue sections of the game Noel and Serah are able to ask one of four questions to guide the conversation. Depending on the character talked to, asking a question may lock further conversation options. On these occasions it is possible for the time era to be left and the gate reset to its original state. Collected items stay in Noel and Serah’s possession, but world events reset allowing missed dialogue opportunities to be explored, opening up more of the story of correcting unwanted outcomes. Its an interesting dynamic that at least offers an interesting in game excuse to enable you to explore every out come in the world without resorting to playing through the whole game again.

 

 

With side quests constantly being offered it can become quite daunting for the player unable to say ‘no’, especially as most tasks seem to be convoluted fetch quests across time and space. Frequently I would already have items, or simply forget what I was looking for only to talk to a quest giver a second time and find out that, without knowing it, I had completed their task. Even the fetched items are unconvincing in their role, collected from generic orbs that only offer a text description to identify what has been discovered. Its reasonable enough, but it robs some of the satisfaction of finishing a quest when in fact it was achieved through fortunate happenstance.