Final Fantasy XIII-2

Final Fantasy XIII-2
Original title	フ ァ イ ナ ル フ ァ ン タ ジ ー XIII-2
transcription	Fainaru Fantajī Sātīn-Tsū
Studio	Square Enix
Publisher	Square Enix
Erstveröffent- lichung	PS3, Xbox 360: December 15, 2011 January 31, 2012 February 3, 2012 Windows: December 11, 2014 iOS, Android: September 25, 2015
platform	PlayStation 3 , Xbox 360 , Windows , iOS , Android , Xbox One
genre	role playing game
Game mode	Single player
control	Game controller
medium	Blu-ray , DVD-9 , download
language	Japanese , English with German subtitles
Age rating	USK PEGI
PEGI content rating

Final Fantasy XIII-2 ( Japanese フ ァ イ ナ ル フ ァ ン タ ジ ー XIII-2 , Fainaru Fantajī Sātīn-Tsū ) is an RPG of the Final Fantasy series , which is available for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 by Square Enix , assisted by tri-Ace with regard to game design, Art and programming, developed and published. The game was first released on December 15, 2011 in Japan and on January 31, 2012 in the United States. In Europe it was released on February 3, 2012. In December 2014, a version for Windows was released. It is the direct successor to Final Fantasy XIII and part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis series . After Final Fantasy X-2 , it is only the second Final Fantasy game that is a direct successor to a previous part and thus takes place in a world that is already in use.

Gameplay

The gameplay has a few differences to its immediate predecessor Final Fantasy XIII . In this way, opponents are usually no longer visible, but appear suddenly. However, these are not random fights as there is still the possibility of avoiding the fights. Another innovation is the mogronometer . The characters are permanently accompanied by a moogle . If an enemy appears, the moog turns into a mogronometer. This is divided into a green, a yellow and a red area. After the appearance of an opponent, the mogronometer counts down from the green, to the yellow and finally to the red area. Depending on the point in time at which the opponent is attacked, the starting conditions of the fight change. In the green area the characters have an advantage, in the yellow area the fight begins under neutral conditions and in the red area the opponent has an advantage.

What's also new is that defeated monsters sometimes leave a crystal behind. This makes it possible to use the monster as part of your own group in combat. When switching to another paradigm, the monster is replaced by one that fits the corresponding paradigm. There are over 150 different monsters that can be used in this way. In addition to the standard attacks, each type of monster has a special attack that can be performed when a special bar, the empathy bar , is fully charged. With the paradigm change and the series bonus, the combat system itself largely corresponds to the system of Final Fantasy XIII (see Final Fantasy XIII # combat system ). What is new is that fights are partially interrupted by quick-time events . A smaller new tactical element is the so-called blood damage : Attacks with this attribute not only reduce the current life points as usual , but also - for the duration of a fight - the maximum life points.

In line with its time travel theme , the game is less linear than its predecessor and offers significantly more freedom of movement and interaction options. The player can return to previously visited sections of the game almost at any time via a selection screen called the Chronosphere. When leaving a section, the time is stopped in this, so that the player can start the action again at the same point when he returns. New sections are made accessible by opening time portals with so-called artifacts that the player receives during the course of the story. Portals can also be closed again, which reverses the associated storyline. Another innovation are orders from non-player characters , which the player can accept and after which he receives so-called fragments as well as additional experience points . In numerous dialogues you can choose from up to four different answer options.

Further innovations in this game are the inevitable puzzles built into the game in order to solve so-called anomalies, as well as the four quiz terminals (called Brain Blast Quiz) in Akademia. These sometimes ask the player general questions about Final Fantasy , but sometimes also those that cannot be solved without background knowledge. The exact constellation of questions is randomly drawn from a total of several hundred possible questions. In addition to these four fixed places, an NPC named Captain Kryptic appears in various places who asks further questions. The principle of increasing the number of questions is used, e.g. B. One question the first time, two questions the second time, and so on. Again, the questions are randomly chosen from a pool of around 100 questions. The questions serve as mini-games and are necessary, among other things, to complete the game 100 percent.

action

scenario

The main storyline of Final Fantasy XIII-2 begins three years after the end of Final Fantasy XIII . The fall of the world Cocoon on the planet Grand Pulse was stopped at that time by the sacrifice of vanilla and catch of a huge crystal column, whereby the two themselves were enclosed in crystal form in the column. Humans then left Cocoon and settled in Grand Pulse. The theocratic government of the sanctum has been replaced by the academy , a research institution that uses scientific methods to try to improve the living conditions of the people on Grand Pulse.

The main character of the game is Serah Farron, the younger sister of the main female character Lightning from the first part. Lightning herself has disappeared and is believed to be dead by everyone except Serah, since no one except her can remember that Lightning was with them on Grand Pulse after the fall of Cocoon. Only Serah's fiancé Snow Villiers believed her and left alone two years earlier to look for Lightning.

history

Cosplayers as Serah and Lightning

One day the settlement of New Bodhum, where Serah now lives and works as a teacher, is attacked by monsters from time gaps. Serah gets help from Noel Kreiss, a young man who saves her life. From him she learns that Lightning is in Walhalla, a place of chaos at the end of time and the seat of the weakened goddess Etro (for the mythology of the game world see also Fabula Nova Crystallis - Final Fantasy # Mythology ). Noel reports that he himself is one of the last surviving people from a bleak future, from where he set off into the past via Walhalla with the help of time travel portals. Lightning has him as a lucky charm for her sister a Mogry given named Mog, who accompanied Serah from now on. However, Noel has lost large parts of his memory, which he only gradually regained.

Together, Serah and Noel embark on a journey through different regions and epochs of Grand Pulse and Cocoon in order to find Lightning and change the future. Seven years in the future they will meet Hope Estheim, who is now the head of the academy, and his assistant Alyssa Zaidelle, a young scientist and survivor of the purgation through the sanctum (see Final Fantasy XIII # Prehistory ). Hope shows them a recording of the ancient people of the time seers that shows Lightning on Grand Pulse and in Walhalla. As Serah and Noel find more records, it becomes clear that their primary goal is to create a timeline in which the crystal pillar that supports Cocoon does not collapse prematurely, a disaster that will ultimately trigger the end of humanity. To do this, they have to solve various time paradoxes, i.e. eliminate living beings or events that actually do not belong in their time. During this task, they briefly meet Serah's fiancé Snow, who is still looking in vain for Lightning. Snow helps the two fight a huge monster that will destroy the crystal pillar. However, when this paradox is resolved, Snow also disappears from the timeline. Serah and Noel increasingly realize that their attempts to change the future also affect the past.

While traveling through time, Serah and Noel repeatedly meet two people Noel knows from the future: a man named Caius Ballad, Noel's teacher and master, accompanied by Paddra Nys Jul, a young girl and the last survivor of the time seers. Caius and Noel's most important job was to protect Jul, and Noel remembers failing to do so but forgetting the exact circumstances. Caius tries by all means to stop Serah and Noel and protect the timeline. Only gradually does Caius' motivation become clear: Jul has the ability to survey the entire past and future, and dies every time her timeline is changed. Caius himself is immortal and, as Jul's protector, can no longer bear to watch her cycle of early death and rebirth in different spacetime. Therefore he wants to kill the goddess Etro in Walhalla, which would set free chaos and bring time to a standstill everywhere like there. For this reason, Etro chose Lightning as her guardian, who has since defended Etro's throne against Caius in Valhalla.

Hundreds of years in the future, Serah and Noel meet again with Hope and Alyssa, who have been stasis in a time capsule, in the metropolis Akademia , the academy's headquarters at the foot of the crystal pillar. The collapse of the pillar now seems inevitable after Hope's plan to create an artificial Fal'Cie that makes Cocoon float like before failed because it would later turn against its creator. The new plan is to build a second cocoon and evacuate the people there. It is believed that Caius will use this time to attack, whereupon Serah and Noel set off to stop him. In doing so, however, they are deceived by Alyssa, so that Caius can catch them separately from each other in a dream world, the sphere of the hereafter . With the help of Vanilla and Fang, who can communicate with Serah in their crystal sleep, she manages to free herself and then Noel from his dream. In it she also sees Noel's future, in which he is the last person left after Caius left for Valhalla and Jul died in his arms.

After a brief encounter with Lightning, Serah and Noel arrive at the correct time for the evacuation in Akademia and can defeat Caius in an epic battle that leads them to Valhalla. Thereupon Caius wants to be killed by Noel and therefore tells the two to Serah's horror that he had killed Lightning before, which Noel thinks is a trick. Caius tries one last attack on Serah, which Noel stops with his sword. The argument ends with Caius killing himself by piercing his heart with Noel's blade. With this, “the last paradox seems to have been solved” and Serah and Noel return to Grand Pulse. At that moment the crystal pillar breaks and Cocoon falls, but at the same time the new Cocoon, called Bhunivelze , rises with the evacuated people. Before that, it was possible to recover the vanilla and catch crystals from the column. Everything seems to end well when Serah suddenly dies in front of Noel and Hope. Like Jul, she was killed by the shock of seeing the entire past and future of the altered timeline. Shortly afterwards, chaos falls over the world, because Etro died with Caius, manifested in his heart. The last scene shows Lightning sitting on Etro's throne frozen in crystal.

reception

criticism

While Final Fantasy XIII-2 received perfect ratings in the Japanese magazines Famitsu and Dengeki PlayStation , outside of Japan it was not quite as euphoric, but overall positive.

Gamezone magazine gave it an 8.3 / 10 rating. It praised the graphics and the narrative (“true popcorn cinema”) as well as the scope. The more revealing areas as well as the numerous secondary tasks were highlighted as positive. The main criticism was the characters, who were described as "pale, emotionless and cheesy"; the game and combat system was judged to be modern but shallow.

IGN Entertainment got an overall rating of 8/10 ("Great"), with particular emphasis on the large scope of play and the sound. The graphic implementation of the characters and the game world was also praised, even if it was less impressive than the predecessor. The plot, which only achieves emotional clarity at the end, and the open ending were criticized here.

GameSpot magazine also criticized the plot, with an overall rating of 7.5 / 10 (“good”). Although the reviewer saw Caius as a fantastic opponent, too little screen time was devoted to the best characters (Lightning and Caius) compared to the less interesting main characters (Serah and Noel). In addition, there are always sections in which the narrative pace is slowed down, for example by an elaborate search or a longer jump-'n'-run -like section right before the finale. In addition, the main story is rather short and easy to master compared to the secondary tasks.

Sales figures

To date (as of April 30, 2014) 3.25 million copies of the game have been sold worldwide, less than half as many as its predecessor. The PlayStation 3's share is 2.55 million and the Xbox 360's 0.70 million.

Web links

• Official homepage (multilingual)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Final Fantasy XIII-2: Dates and PS3 bundle confirmed (play3.de)
2. ^ Yūichirō Kitao: no title. In: Twitter. December 18, 2011, Retrieved February 23, 2015 (Japanese). 
3. ↑ ^{a b} play³ : 08/2011 pp. 26-29
4. ↑ Final Fantasy Brain Blast trivia questions . YouCreation game guide. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
5. ↑ Kevin Gifford: Japan review check Final Fantasy XIII-2 from 1up.com
6. ↑ Anoop Gantayat: Team Final Fantasy XIII-2 Shares Some Final Words with Dengeki PlayStation ( Memento from December 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
7. ↑ Final Fantasy XIII-2: The international ratings from play3.de
8. ↑ Alexander Winkel: Final Fantasy XIII-2 in the Gamezone test by Gamezone
9. ↑ Ryan Clements: Final Fantasy XIII-2 Review by IGN ( Memento of the original from December 2, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
10. ↑ Kevin VanOrd: Final Fantasy XIII-2 Review ( Memento October 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) by GameSpot
11. ↑ Game Database of VGChartz
12. ↑ Game Database of VGChartz
13. ↑ Game Database of VGChartz