Before I get to Final Fantasy 13-2, let me explain a few things.
There are three things I don’t understand in life. Economics is the most gaping chasm in my knowledge: if Greece is bankrupt, why doesn’t it just print more money?
The second is why Square-Enix keeps refusing to remake Final Fantasy 7, the best video game of the 1990s, but is happy to rehash Chrono Trigger, the second best game of the 1990s, on Nintendo DS and iPhone.
The third, by coincidence, also relates to the Japanese gaming giant. I can’t comprehend why it would amalgamate elements from both these iconic titles, then try and staple them on to the sequel of the worst single player entry in the Final Fantasy series so far.
That’s not to say that Final Fantasy 13-2 is a bad game. Far from it. It addresses many of the problems Final Fantasy 13, a Brobdingnagian but strangely blinkered RPG, suffered from: namely, it being one long corridor that takes 50 hours to walk down.
It’s just that in doing so, Square takes the best bits of its classic games, and slaps you in the face with them.
Let’s start at the beginning, which is actually the end of the first game: the world floating above the other, Cocoon, has been saved. But for some reason, that game’s protagonist, Lightning, has fallen through time to the end of the world, and has decided to guard this other realm, rather than say, go home and have a bubble bath. Whatever. You’ll have to get used to these non-sequiturs, they happen a lot in this game. I still have no idea what a fal’cie is, either.
Within minutes, the game’s enemy, Caius, is seen slowing releasing the body of a young woman into the water. What? This is Square flipping its middle finger at Final Fantasy fans, and an obvious riff on an iconic scene in FF7.
People with impossibly spiky hair wander around, travelling through time (Chrono Trigger) and musing on the nature of fate for quite a few hours, until later on in the game, you end up at an amusement park with mini-games remarkably similar to the Golden Saucer. FF7 again. Thanks Square.
But I digress. I love Final Fantasy, and I’ve had a chip on my shoulder ever since Square showed off its PS3 technical demo, a glorious remake of the opening of FF7, and gaming’s greatest tease.
Final Fantasy 13-2, allusions to classics aside, is a perfectly acceptable sequel. It doesn’t dump on any paradigms, or smack any moulds in the face with a sledgehammer.
Square’s trimmed the fat, tweaking the gameplay and reducing the cast. Gone are summons, or eidolons, monstrous titans that became oddly feeble as the first game went on. Out too is crude stereotype Sazh, a black man with hair so nappy that a chocobo nested in it.
Instead, you’re left to adventure through all of Gran Pulse across the ages with two characters, Lightning’s sister, Serah, and Noel, ostensibly from the End Times, but actually lifted straight out of Kingdom Hearts before he could even finish straightening his hair. He’s come back in time to help Serah find Lightning and change the future because he fancies a breath of fresh air, as far as I can tell.
Questionable motivations aside, the new structure is certainly more interesting than travelling in a straight line, punctuated by fights. You travel across different time zones, accessed by gates, which you have to unlock by finding artifacts. You can tackle each one in almost any order, and even end up with different game endings as a result.
This new layout is not without its flaws however: the different routes across time mean difficulty level can fluctuate wildly. After getting stuck at one seemingly impossible boss, I headed off to complete a different section, only to return and find myself massively over-levelled, wading through enemies with no trouble whatsoever. Still, if it’s sections proving too easy, or having to grind for hours just to level up and survive, I choose the former.
The battle system, one of the biggest gripes that many had with Final Fantasy 13, has changed very little however. Proceedings play out at a blinding clip and bosses boast HP in the seven figures: it’s up to you to choose the tactics rather than the individual commands, but there’s an incentive to finish fights quickly, as enemies can now “wound” you and reduce your maximum health, making fights increasingly hairy the longer they last. Do you go all out and assault, or have someone take the blows while everyone else buffs up with spells? By everyone I mean, of course, Serah and your Pokemon.
Oh, did I not mention that there’s Pokemon? Yeah, there’s Pokemon.
Instead of a third character, you can use animals that you defeat and capture. They have the same roles as humans, acting as medics or commandos and so forth, and can be levelled up with items found lying around. It’s not quite throwing red and white balls at monsters and hoping they squeeze into them somehow, but it’s still litigiously close.
So is the game any good? Well, it looks it at any rate: the game is an ocular feast. It’s so rare that we’re treated to a game developed for the PS3 these days, rather than simply ported to it, that you almost forget what Sony’s black box is still capable of. Assuming you like simpering anime characters with implausible eyes and implausible breasts, anyway.
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably au fait with this: it’s the price you pay for a tactical game that pits you against fantastical giant bosses that require strategy, rather than a trigger finger, to knock over.
As a story-driven Japanese roleplaying game though, it’s time to concede that Final Fantasy is no longer the high watermark. Monolith’s Xenoblade Chronicles for Wii, a vast, mesmerising paean to what a J-RPG should be, holds that mantle now instead.
As a sequel to a sequel, Final Fantasy 13-2 is a concession that Square would rather tread water than try. It’d rather do hyphens than new games. Fewer characters and a couple more doors along the corridor won’t change the simple fact that if you didn’t like 13’s fight system, its meat and two veg, Final Fantasy 13-2 won’t convince you otherwise.
If you did however, it’s an enjoyable return to the same universe, and not much more. Just try not to think about Final Fantasy Versus 13 too much. That remake of 7 will be out before that ever sees the light of day.
