The Merged Final Fantasy XIII-2 Thread

[Yggdrasil]

Lightning's Story "Requiem of the Goddess" trailer

Thanks to PlayStation HK we now have the first trailer for Lightning's Story: Requiem of the Goddess. -- Source: Nova Crystallis

[Dice]

Lightning's Story "Requiem of the Goddess" trailer

Thanks to PlayStation HK we now have the first trailer for Lightning's Story: Requiem of the Goddess. -- Source: Nova Crystallis

Hmm..  This is hopefully cheap, as far as I could tell, you fight Caius only (multiple forms don't count), or gives story deets.... or hell, I may just watch it on YouTube, save some pesos.

[Agent D.]

What happened to Snow's dlc?

Edit: Just watched the trailer....those numbers.....wow. It's like I'm watching a disgaea trailer.

[kyuusei]

Snow's DLC is tomorrow too ($4) and Lightning's is $5.

I don't have the game but now I kinda wish I did to play Lightning's episode :P Yeah I should play the rest of the game first.

[Yggdrasil]

As tempting as it is to get the DLC on day 1 I better just save the money to buy Blade Runner on Blu-ray. I do need to watch that movie.

[Dice]

So I watched a YouTube playthrough.  I'm glad I did, it's over in half an hour and really it is just a Caius fight (albeit a hard one-on-one).  However, it does give that 13-3 set-up.  But it's full of the emotional speeches that tend to run-on and are worth next to nothing unless you're really invested into the characters/plot. Serah and Lightning go on about "having hope" and all that. Meanwhile, you get to hear Yuel chipping in a bit by essentially saying the equivalent of: "I hate to say I told you so...but I TOLD YOU SO" about what happened to Serah.

Spoilz

Hm. The game doesn't give much indication to having Serah revive somehow, rather this seem to solidify her staying dead with Serah's spirit having "no regrets" and this serving as a new "reason to fight" or whatever conviction for Lightning. A bit of a pain speaking you go through so much for her in the first game to only have her, more or less, die again here.

The plot for this game is ridiculous as is... don't know what magic tricks they're gonna slug out for the 3rd go around.
Oddly enough, I hope it comes out quick to finish it. Nothing like a good cliffhanger even on a bad story to keep you coming back.

[Yggdrasil]

However, it does give that 13-3 set-up.  But it's full of the emotional speeches that tend to run-on and are worth next to nothing unless you're really invested into the characters/plot.

So this DLC is for me then. ~.~

Glad to know that. I never imagine that I was gonna get so invested in the universe of XIII with the sequel.

[Yggdrasil]

Snow Villiers Episode: Arena of Eternity DLC trailer

[Ashton]

I finished the game. I got so annoyed and bored of the story I skipped all of the cutscenes for the last few time periods and just read a synopsis. Let me say that this is something I RARELY EVER DO. Last time I did something like this was in Eternal Sonata after having to sit through stupid girl writhing on the ground cutscene for thirty minutes. Seriously, the story and writing in this game is ridiculously shitty. I'm talking "Spider Man: Brand New Day" shitty, maybe even worse. Nothing that happens in the game makes any sort of cognitive sense, and the explanations only serve to make it look like a bunch of people wrote their ideas down and they just went "BOFFO!" and used everything without an ounce of context.

What I DID like about the game was (surprisingly) the monster raising. I spent more time than I thought I would just catching different monsters, min-maxing stats, and infusing them so I could have the perfect attack monster or healer. They should've made the monster raising items easier to acquire instead of just making players grind for them, though; also, I would have preferred if they allowed more monster slots - having only three slots for six roles really diminished some of the strategy that could have been gotten from the battle system. Speaking of that, I liked the battle system a lot more here, maybe because they actually let you do pretty much everything from the get go instead of wasting 20 hours unlocking the whole thing like in the last game.

[Dice]

Monster raising had a lot more depth than I would have ever thought it would have.  I wish there was a bonus dungeon and bonus bosses (coliseum is a cheap way to do that... actually, rather expensive).  But the challenge for the game was pretty good as well (I had more of a dick time fighting the Behemoth monster-boss in Acedemia 700 than the final boss...).

The story is bat shit stupid.  I mean, how that got approved is laughable.
Something really hurts too, when they completely changed concepts between the first and second title, feels like them somewhat regretting their original "ideas".

[Cyril]

I desperately miss the 1984 vibes from the first game.  I feel like XIII had an atmosphere, a tone in general. XIII-2 lacks that.

I, too, was pleasantly surprised at the depth of the monster developing. It went above and beyond my expectations. 

[Prime Mover]

The story is bat shit stupid.  I mean, how that got approved is laughable.

Not sure I agree, at all. By in larger, I really liked the plot; very Doctor Who. The only thing I found bat-shit stupid was the villain's final motives. That really brought the game down for me, but aside from that, I didn't think anything else about the plot was bad at all.

[Dice]

The story is bat shit stupid.  I mean, how that got approved is laughable.

Not sure I agree, at all. By in larger, I really liked the plot; very Doctor Who. The only thing I found bat-shit stupid was the villain's final motives. That really brought the game down for me, but aside from that, I didn't think anything else about the plot was bad at all.

The plot had potential, but the writing was so ludicrous it hampered both for me.

The fact everything was Scoody-Doo'd really sucked.  Hmmm, what's causing the problem?  A PARADOX.  But where's ____?  A PARADOX lost it!!  This enemy is tough!!!  He's a PARADOX.  There's a space-time distortion with a puzzle inside!! PARADOX made it!!!
I don't think there was really any instance they used a "paradox" into what it actually is, just as a "nasty element" that had to be fought or found.

It felt way too contrived too:

"Hope, why are you in the future!?"
...Why, he invented a device of course! 
"Ollraight!!"

And again, the fact it is so far off from the original concept of FF13 makes it all the more visible they're trying to depart from their original vision of it, or the no longer have faith in it.  Lightning went from a government rebel saving her sister, to a goddess knight and protector of time... literally, OVERNIGHT.
What a crap-sack work too.  Part 1 -- WORLD IS IN DANGER.  Part 2 -- three years later; WORLD IS IN DANGER AGAIN.  I'd rather a game series move on...  I think FF13-2 could have been way better in the story department if it wasn't so attached to its original material. 

[Prime Mover]

I do think your harder on the game then it really deserves. First of all, a lot of the paradoxes really are paradoxes. A paradox is defined as a thing that should not exist/happen by the laws of mathematics/physics/reality. Many of the paradoxes were self-creating loops: things that existed because they had come back and created themselves. You can't get much more paradoxical than that.

Personally, I'm glad they turned their back on FFXIII. FFXIII had good atmosphere and character potential, but I thought its plot was FAR worse, and took itself way too seriously for what it was. FFXIII-2 has a lightness to it that could kind of play with itself, despite it's flaws. I'll more easily forgive any flawed plot that knows that its flawed, and has fun with itself.

And by a character aspect, as we've already discussed, FFXIII made a lot of bad design decisions (particularly Snow/Serah) that it's good to see SE trying to revise. Some of the changes aren't accounted for, and those are usually the ones that are more forgivable in the first place. The rest of the changes they usually give pretty decent reasons for. Lightning became a knight because she basically had to. She was whisked away to a place where a madman was both trying to destroy everything, and kill her personally. She's fighting for her life just as much as she's fighting for any overarching goal.

[Dice]

But again, I would have rather an original plot for all that.  I think it would have allowed way more flexibility.

Anyone else alarmed by Hope's city in the sky??  Seems to only bring the series back and hidden away on a "moon" object.  That, and doesn't seem to be any water source on it.