Final Fantasy XIII-2

[The Human Torch]

Did Final Fantasy XIII-2 sell well? It's been out for a long time and I never bothered to look anything up about it but I'm really curious cuz personally I hope it didn't. I really hope that it did so poorly that they consider ending the series all together.

Really, The Final Fantasy Series was great, it was better than great, but if they're going to keep making bad decisions then they should end the series before they ruin it. Square Enix needs to make some new series and drag it's name through the mud if they want to keep making bad games. Then at least Final Fantasy cand die with dignity before everyone's opinion of the series turns negative.

Taken from the Final Fantasy XIII-2 Wikipedia website:
"Final Fantasy XIII-2 received mostly positive reviews from video game journalists, which praised the game's graphics, lack of linearity and gameplay but criticized the story. During the first week of sales in Japan, the game sold 524,000 units and reached 1.1 million copies worldwide as of March 2012. Final Fantasy XIII-2 has become the fifth best-selling game of 2011 in Japan."
So, it did not do bad at all and if you ask my girlfriend, who has played almost every Final Fantasy, it's a fantastic game.

Your opinion =/= her opinion. Do not ask for the deaths of franchises simply because, YOU did not enjoy it. Don't think of your own taste in games to be 'better'.

 

[kabooz18]

OP: I enjoyed it. Have the plats for both XIII and XIII-2.
I've also played FF since the days of the NES.
I tend to look at things with an open mind, and wihout the auto-battle feature...

I did too and both were much fun for me

but I have to say that I think the english voices of some characters make them very annoying
and yes I played both in english and japanese ^^

the story rivals Final Fantasy VI which has the best story to date IMHO.

the graphics are nice but largely irrelevant to me as I'm mainly a PC gamer I'm accustomed to this level anyway^^

the gameplay was very boring the first 20 hours of FFXIII (except when in boss fights which were pretty hard <3) but in the end it was interesting and rewarding.
for FFXIII-2 it's different it was always interesting but way easier.

the characters are awesome though hope, vanille and even serah were annoying in english they were translated very directly which made them overenthusiastic or annoyingly whiny.

I hope very much for a FF XIII-3 (I haven't played through the secret ending so I don't know if there can be one)

 

[OrpheusTelos]

So, you hope that a franchise dies because you did not like some installments and did not even bother to inform yourself about the quality of the one you hoped had bad sales.

Why? Why with this installment and not with the far worse one: FF X? Do you just jump on the bandwagon that hates every direct sequel to a FF game without any logical reason?

Not really. There's no banwagon about this. I didn't give Final Fantasy 13-2 a chance because it didn't deserve 1, why buy a sequal to something you have no interest in. I can understand if you might've liked Final Fantasy 13 but I really can't understand why people can like it over any other game in the series.

But even without comparing Final Fantasy 13 to any of the other games in the series it is simply a bad game.

Hard to follow story that's not interesting anyway, baddly made maps which are nothing but long worm holes of endless running in 1 direction without anything to do in them. Poor combat.

With exception to the summon battles every battle in the game is Press circle twice before a blue bar fills up and press L1 to heal and even the most randomly obscure random encounters take quite a long time. The only reason I got as far as I did in that game was because I had a turbo controler to fight the random battles for me.

Yes I've been told there's more to the battle system then that but this game gave me no motivation to care.

I actually got irritated when the random battles ended cuz I had to put my DS down and stop playing Pokemon to continue walking down those long endless halls because they curved slightly to the right or left just enough for me to be unable to multitask them.

Then there are the forgettable characters that you're not allowed to be interested in. Who were those people at the beginning of the game? Who cares cuz you never see them again. Who was that bad guy that was chasing you? Who cares because before you get to know him he dies and you never fight him but some random helicopter instead....cool I guess. Who was that lady that seemed kind of interesting that stole afro comic relief's son? Who cares, she died before you get to fight her too and you end up fighting some old guy who they just introduced...but then you kill him so he must not have been important either...

Honestly no one would know who the Turks were if they followed the same storytelling as Final Fantasy 13. I mean what the heck is the plot anyway, hehe! ^_^ Everyone relies on giant Sha'tar to do everything but the main characters got to close to one and got marked with a tran-stamp that will eventually turn them into zombies.

That storyline is ok but in my opinion they told the story so poorly that with such boring gameplay that I lost interest in the story and started skipping cut scenes cuz the option existed.

And that's the whole game. There's nothing more to it then that, I heard near the last chapter you can revist places you've already been but who cares. Everywhere I previously was were the same long boring worm tunnels.

That's why I hate Final Fantasy 13. It was just a bad game. ^_^ Hehe, and even trying to be interested in Final Fantasy 13-2 is like saying. "Well I didn't care for Hunger Games, maybe I'll like Catching Fire for no reason." No, that's dumb. If I don't care about the first game I'm not going to be interested in it's sequal.

When Final Fantasy 14 comes....

Excuse me. when Final Fantasy 15 comes out, maybe I'll give the series another shot. I definitly wont buy it on launch day. I'm going to research it until either my interest for the game is gone or I'm convinced it's at least worth playing.

Which (while may or may not be good per-say) were at least worth playing. Final Fantasy 11, 13, 13-2, 14, and any Crystal Chronicle Game after Crystal Chronicles WERE NOT.

^_^ If you actually read this far than bravo sir.

You got a lot of good points here but really, does anyone care about the FF series anymore? I feel like we're debating about a dead person.

Oh and I have to add, there is no fucking way FFX is anywhere near as bad as FF13.

Of course people care. It's a long-running franchise of popular games. Regardless of some opinions about them, they manage to find an audience that enjoys them (such as myself), and that is FINE.

OP: Incidentally, I hated XIII-2.

It had NOTHING to do with XIII. I was hoping they would take what XIII did well and expand upon it. Nope.

 

[The White Hunter]

Hard to follow story that's not interesting anyway, baddly made maps which are nothing but long worm holes of endless running in 1 direction without anything to do in them. Poor combat.

The story of 13 to me was kind of like the story of 10. Only very bad. With poor explanation ofeverything. I'd rather have a few expositional cutscenes or playable flashbacks or something, anything, but throwing an encyclopedia on the menu every time I see anything new.

I want to play a game not read a book.

Also: 13 had an incredibly boring combat system.

Personally I love 3, 4, 7, 10, and 12 (it only gets hate for being different, if it had been a new IP and not FF it'd have been lapped up, kept me interested for the longest time of any game in the series). 8 and 9 are decent entries.

 

[wooty]

I didn't mind it, infact I quite enjoyed it for the most part. Final Fantasy still has a huge player base for its games and saying kill off a franchise because of one dodgy game is ludicrous.

The story does fit in somewhat with what happened in XIII and leads onto another question for the next game. I ain't gonna complain about it, bought it for £30 and got 50+ hours out of it. Entertainment surplus really.

 

[JasonKaotic]

I don't know, Final Fantasy looks like it might be picking up again at least a bit. I mean, look at X-2 and XII, and then look at XIII and Versus XIII (haven't played/don't know much about XIII-2 yet). It seems like they're at least trying to make the franchise good again. They just need to get rid of XIII's linearity. I'm still hopeful for now. I suppose we'll just have to wait for XV to decide.

 

[Suave Charlie]

XIII-2 is far and away better than 13. Like absurdly so, they've really fixed a load of problems and made the gameplay entertaining and the story (as confusing as it may be) compelling enough that I actually wanted to keep playing, as opposed to 13 where the game was a chore for the first 20~ hours.

 

[Suave Charlie]

This is what I don't understand. There are some valid reasons for disliking a game. FF13 was to linear for most of the game and some characters were a bit annoying. You might have liked or not liked the story, that is a matter of taste.

What is not valid however is saying the story is bad and things are poorly explained because you refused to read it. The details and story were there, easily accessible, in a format that allowed you to even go back over it if you didn't quite understand it the first time.

Put it this way, would you think that criticism of a book should be taken seriously if the reader skipped every second chapter?

I agree that the story was there but I just don't think it was all that accessible, it really did take effort to work out what the hell was going on in 13. To be honest the amount of terms the game threw at you in the first 20 minutes did get a bit overwhelming. And it took me ages to work out how cocoon was physically structured.

 

[The White Hunter]

This is what I don't understand. There are some valid reasons for disliking a game. FF13 was to linear for most of the game and some characters were a bit annoying. You might have liked or not liked the story, that is a matter of taste.

What is not valid however is saying the story is bad and things are poorly explained because you refused to read it. The details and story were there, easily accessible, in a format that allowed you to even go back over it if you didn't quite understand it the first time.

Put it this way, would you think that criticism of a book should be taken seriously if the reader skipped every second chapter?

No the book should not be criticised but thats not what I'm saying. I'd much rather, when playing a game, have some more exposition in cutscenes or gameplay than be handed a glossary. It is helpful to have that information to go back over and check up on details but it shouldn't be necessary to fully grasp the story, in FFX and FFXII I didn't have to read up on everything to understand what was going on.

FFXII did however also hand you a glossary, but it wasn't needed to understand everything that was going on and it was fascinating.

The story isn't bad and poorly explained because I refused to read it, because I did read it. I'd rather have had explanations in game without having to break away to read it all. Even then I found the story bland and poorly told relative to certain other games in the franchise.

In the grand scheme of things FF13 is not awful. It just isn't as good as it could have been, bigger issues with the game were the crushing linearity (at least FFX opened up near the end and had some extra areas to explore for fun), the combat system was just dull in a bizaarely hypnotic autonomous way.

FF13 was a disappointment and a relatively poor final fantasy. Overall it was worth playing but a lot of aspects of the game cuold have been handled much better.

Also, semi OT: just got 13-2 and the hardback of the guide for £17. I love amazon.

 

[The White Hunter]

This is what I don't understand. There are some valid reasons for disliking a game. FF13 was to linear for most of the game and some characters were a bit annoying. You might have liked or not liked the story, that is a matter of taste.

What is not valid however is saying the story is bad and things are poorly explained because you refused to read it. The details and story were there, easily accessible, in a format that allowed you to even go back over it if you didn't quite understand it the first time.

Put it this way, would you think that criticism of a book should be taken seriously if the reader skipped every second chapter?

I agree that the story was there but I just don't think it was all that accessible, it really did take effort to work out what the hell was going on in 13. To be honest the amount of terms the game threw at you in the first 20 minutes did get a bit overwhelming. And it took me ages to work out how cocoon was physically structured.

Yeah exactly, it wasn't accessible, it'd have been nicer to have had it all woven into the narrative, maybe an explanation in a cutscene rather than a glossary would have been nice. Previous entries did just fine at that and I think it was a step back for square.

 

[kabooz18]

-SNIP-

I agree that the story was there but I just don't think it was all that accessible, it really did take effort to work out what the hell was going on in 13. To be honest the amount of terms the game threw at you in the first 20 minutes did get a bit overwhelming. And it took me ages to work out how cocoon was physically structured.

Yeah exactly, it wasn't accessible, it'd have been nicer to have had it all woven into the narrative, maybe an explanation in a cutscene rather than a glossary would have been nice. Previous entries did just fine at that and I think it was a step back for square.

interesting I heard that often.
I somehow never had a problem to keep up and understood nearly immediately how everything fit together.
and I never had to read the glossary, though I did for stuff like Psicom.

 

[The White Hunter]

-SNIP-

I agree that the story was there but I just don't think it was all that accessible, it really did take effort to work out what the hell was going on in 13. To be honest the amount of terms the game threw at you in the first 20 minutes did get a bit overwhelming. And it took me ages to work out how cocoon was physically structured.

Yeah exactly, it wasn't accessible, it'd have been nicer to have had it all woven into the narrative, maybe an explanation in a cutscene rather than a glossary would have been nice. Previous entries did just fine at that and I think it was a step back for square.

interesting I heard that often.
I somehow never had a problem to keep up and understood nearly immediately how everything fit together.
and I never had to read the glossary, though I did for stuff like Psicom.

I got a good idea of what was happening but the experience would have been all the richer and more delicious for some exposition woven into narrative and gameplay, as had been the case with alot of previous Squeenix titles.

On a related note I would love for all RPG's from now on to have a "mark all as read" option like Dragon Age. I do not like the flashing "NEW!" emblems they make my OCD go into overdrive.

 

[kabooz18]

-SNIP-

No the book should not be criticised but thats not what I'm saying. I'd much rather, when playing a game, have some more exposition in cutscenes or gameplay than be handed a glossary. It is helpful to have that information to go back over and check up on details but it shouldn't be necessary to fully grasp the story, in FFX and FFXII I didn't have to read up on everything to understand what was going on.

FFXII did however also hand you a glossary, but it wasn't needed to understand everything that was going on and it was fascinating.

The story isn't bad and poorly explained because I refused to read it, because I did read it. I'd rather have had explanations in game without having to break away to read it all. Even then I found the story bland and poorly told relative to certain other games in the franchise.

In the grand scheme of things FF13 is not awful. It just isn't as good as it could have been, bigger issues with the game were the crushing linearity (at least FFX opened up near the end and had some extra areas to explore for fun), the combat system was just dull in a bizarrely hypnotic autonomous way.

FF13 was a disappointment and a relatively poor final fantasy. Overall it was worth playing but a lot of aspects of the game cuold have been handled much better.

Also, semi OT: just got 13-2 and the hardback of the guide for £17. I love amazon.

hmm... as I said I never had the problem of grasping the story or intentions or anything even mildly important to me in the game, but I understand where you're coming from and it makes sense as long as I require the game to be actually understood.
I don't think it's good to diminish the story just to make it easier to grasp, since it would also diminish the experience of the game for example braid would not be what it is to me if it were easier to grasp.

 

[kabooz18]

-SNIP-

also snipped

Yeah exactly, it wasn't accessible, it'd have been nicer to have had it all woven into the narrative, maybe an explanation in a cutscene rather than a glossary would have been nice. Previous entries did just fine at that and I think it was a step back for square.

interesting I heard that often.
I somehow never had a problem to keep up and understood nearly immediately how everything fit together.
and I never had to read the glossary, though I did for stuff like Psicom.

I got a good idea of what was happening but the experience would have been all the richer and more delicious for some exposition woven into narrative and gameplay, as had been the case with alot of previous Squeenix titles.

On a related note I would love for all RPG's from now on to have a "mark all as read" option like Dragon Age. I do not like the flashing "NEW!" emblems they make my OCD go into overdrive.

I don't have OCD but I concur it's annoying and unnecessary.
yeah it's definitely better if a good level of comprehension can be reached for everyone but it's a far greater problem if some medium, be it movies books or games, try to explain something to me which should be quite obvious for everybody most of all the protagonists, it's even considered bad writing in kids TV shows.

EDIT: to me at least it's a far greater problem,
since I can always ask another person to understand something or read about it but I can never forget my annoyance at something

 

[The White Hunter]

hmm... as I said I never had the problem of grasping the story or intentions or anything even mildly important to me in the game, but I understand where you're coming from and it makes sense as long as I require the game to be actually understood.
I don't think it's good to diminish the story just to make it easier to grasp, since it would also diminish the experience of the game for example braid would not be what it is to me if it were easier to grasp.

I'm doing that thing where I just can't explain myself very well sorry.

The story shouldn't be all exposition you are correct, but some of it could've been woven in quite easily and would've enhanced the experience for me.

I just feel previous titles were told in a much better way. I don't want a half hour dialogue of what psicom is in the game, but it's little things like in 12 where Balthier tends to explain things to Vaan, rather than give us a few pages of text to read.

That kind of integration helps make the experience more well rounded and enjoyable.

I'm good at wrapping my head round stories, hell I followed MGS2 just fine. I'm also the kind of gamer that scours wikis for intricate detail in my more bored hours. Just FF13 didn't measure up to my expectations in that area, I guess.

Captcha: good for nothing

Well yes captcha I am having difficulty expressing my opinion but I can't help if I'm a moron ):

 

[JWRosser]

I quite enjoyed playing FFXIII, although it certainly was no where near as good as the older Final Fantasy games, and once I completed it I got rid of it, which is a rarity for me in a Final Fantasy games (I've played 6 - 10 countless times). FFXIII-2 was unnecessary, I thought. It was an alright game, but, again, as soon as I completed it I got rid of it.

Though non-linear (to an almost ridiculous extent...) the story wasn't as good as FFXIII's. Yes, often Final Fantasy stories are quite confusing, and "this happens because it does", but XIII-2, for me, had a lot of "eh?" moments. I still don't fully understand what was happening, or what the bad guy's motives were (I can't even remember his name now...), but maybe that's because I wasn't really paying 100% attention. To be honest, I was more concerned with naming and dressing up the monsters I had captured (ah, Solomon the Cactaur...).

I think that it's worth playing, if you enjoyed XIII or Final Fantasy in general, but...it's nothing to write home about.


I love the series, thoroughly enjoyed 6 - 10. Even 12, which receives a lot of hate, was pretty good, I thought. 10-2 was decent as well. Personally, I'm still wanting remakes. The Final Fantasy games are those games where the graphics don't matter - I can still play FF6/7/8/9 and have a great time, but it would be nice to see some current gen graphics and voice acting, I think. As long as they get the voice acting right. I didn't agree with Kuja and Zidane's voices in Dissidea, but the others (like the ones featured in Kingdom Hearts) are all alright.

 

[The White Hunter]

I don't have OCD but I concur it's annoying and unnecessary.
yeah it's definitely better if a good level of comprehension can be reached for everyone but it's a far greater problem if some medium, be it movies books or games, try to explain something to me which should be quite obvious for everybody most of all the protagonists, it's even considered bad writing in kids TV shows.

I don't think I have OCD but I do get pretty obsessive over stuff like that, and my email inbox.
I agree, it isn't that everything should be blurted out in dialogue but some things deserve at least a subtle nod or explanation rather than being handed a glossary with the game.

It's something I know full well that Squeenix can do well (7, 10, 12), and 13 just didn't quite measure up.