Final Fantasy XIII-2

Although not a first for the franchise, but the first that I’ve played, Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a rare direct sequel to a Final Fantasy game. The producers at Square felt that the world and lore that was created for Final Fantasy XIII had more story to tell and after putting more than 100 hours into FF13 myself in 2 complete playthroughs I didn’t disagree with them on that at all. At the end of 13 even the most annoying of characters developed to a point where I actually liked them, or at least accepted them for who they are, and the conflict had resolved to a point of being a satisfying ending. The question is does XIII-2 improve on the perceived flaws of its predecessor. As a bit of a warning I find it very hard to talk about XIII-2 on it’s own merits like I do with most sequels, and this review is going to be a little more referential than I’d like.

I’ve said this before, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it here; I play Final Fantasy games foremost for the story, starting with Final Fantasy 4 (2 in North America) I had a new appreciation for storytelling in video games and I’ve followed the franchise closely ever since. And I’m sad to report that the story told in XIII-2 did not live up to my expectations. I feel like in an effort to improve the flaws cited by fans it became difficult to have a guided, well told experience. Not to mention shorter; I finished XIII-2 in about 25 hours, less than half the time it took me to finish XIII which was practically all story. They gave the players a gated freedom to choose their path (which I will get to later) that resulted at least in terms of story telling, in a ‘villain of the week’ television series model. Where you go to an area, complete the main objective which rarely has much to do with the over-arching plot, you are then rewarded with a bit of information to advance the story. As a gamer primarily interested in the story, there were only 3 moments in the game that I thought were really well told, and only one of those that was really powerful, the ‘reveal’ was excellent, but it definitely didn’t make up for the rest. One other note on length, while I did finish the main story in about 25 hours, that only included 41 of the 160 fragments to be gathered, so in a sense only represents a quarter of the game. fragments are collected by completing main and side quests, finding hidden treasures and killing certain monsters. At the time of this writing I have collected 78/160 and my play time is somewhere between 34-38 hours though much of that was spent in the casino with a button stuck down playing slots (yes I did collect a fragment from this as well). As you can imagine there is a lot of game time here for completionists who are not necessarily motivated by story.

Many fans criticised 13 for linearity, and I agree that the corridors definitely felt tedious at times but I definitely wasn’t as down on the game about it as most. XIII-2 aimed to improve this by introducing the Historia Crux. To me the Historia Crux felt much like a Mario world map, where you unlock new levels by completing objectives in the levels that came before it. In each area you’ll find artefacts that unlock gates found in the area that will open up new, times/locations in the Historia Crux. This is supplemented by gates that are opened using ‘Wild Artefacts’ which gives the player some choice as to which areas they open up next, though it seemed to me that those choices were inconsequential. So while there are some freedoms here, it is just the illusion of freedom since there is still only one way to advance the plot. In a sense, a return to form that many fans of the franchise will be happy to see but I do not believe it was worth the apparent sacrifice to the story telling.

The paradigm combat system remained mostly unchanged, but unlike 13 where you have a whole slew of characters to choose from who are more or less limited to the roles they can fill, your party in 13-2 consists of only 2 characters, Serah and Noel, who don’t really develop at all unlike in 13, and really don’t have any other motivation than to track down lightning by resolving time paradoxes. In 13 there was a certain amount of strategy involved in which characters you put into your battle party since they all contained a different combination of roles and so you couldn’t necessarily have all the representation that you wanted. In 13-2 you fill out your 3 person battle team with monsters. Each monster only has 1 role, but out of combat you establish a paradigm pack of 3 monsters. This gives you a lot of freedom with regards to how you build your team since you are not limited by the roles of a certain character, but the sacrifice there is that some of the strategy is gone. These monsters are randomly collected by beating them in combat. That aspect of it is actually pretty fun in a pokemon sort of way, and collectors are going to have a good/frustrating time trying to “catch ‘em all”. That said most of the monsters I used in my deck I obtained early on and used them for most of the game, I never really felt obligated to switch them out for ‘better’ ones. This is partially due to the Crystarium system which I will get to in a bit. The most disappointing thing to me about the combat system in 13-2 in general however is that the significance of the Saboteur and Synergist roles has been drastically reduced. In 13 I felt like it was crazy to even consider going into a boss battle without the ability to buff/debuff, and in my opinion it was one of the best implementations of those roles because they felt significant. One other change to the combat is the introduction of ”Cinematic Action”, read quick time events, which are implemented in 2 ways. First, via a monster’s ‘Feral Link’ ability, which relies on a chain meter that builds up during combat, once full can be unleashed to perform a monster specific ability that is often (but not always) related to their role. For example, I had a synergist that  would cast a whole slew of buffs, successfully completing the quick time event grants a percentage bonus to the ability. I’m not entirely sure but I believe in the case of the synergist previously mention it modified the duration of those buffs. The second implementation of quick time events is at the end of boss battles, I hate QTEs implemented in this scenario since it takes away from watching some of the best cinematics, luckily these seem to inexplicably taper off in the second half of the game.

The Crystarium system returns though it has been changed dramatically. For the characters, Instead of choosing a role, and getting stats and abilities from nodes within the role, you have 1 set of nodes. Nodes come in different sizes, and you basically assign a role to the node, depending on the size of the node, you get more stats based on the role you’ve selected. For example, if you select commando, your attack will go up, while if you select ravager it will be magic. It’s not 1 to 1 like that though, you will often get ‘some’ points in each, hp, magic and attack, but the stat for role you select gets more. Abilities are unlocked after set amount of nodes have been selected for the role. Monsters also use the Crystarium system though it is slightly different, instead of using CP earned in battle like the characters, monsters use items that you find or buy. These items have stats assigned to them, so you can use ‘magic’ items to improve the magic abilities for the monster for example. I found the items to be a bit scarce when it comes to the later tiers as well as cost prohibitive, which is why I used the same monsters for most of the game. I feel as though it was a missed opportunity to add an element of strategy to the paradigm packs.

I should also mention that mini-games are back, there are some puzzles, and a casino with slots and chocobo racing, and does add a bit of variety to the gameplay and serves as a nice distraction once in a while.

All and all I had an ok time with the game, but I think it went in the wrong direction. It clearly tries to appease those who were disappointed with 13, by adding some of the missing features but in doing so it feels as though it alienated those of us who appreciated 13 for what it was. I’m hoping that there is some sort of proper conclusion by way of DLC as opposed to the full on sequel as the 13-3 rumors are suggesting, because as it stands I have a hard time recommending this game to Final Fantasy fans like myself who are looking for an epic story. The game is not broken by any means and there is some fun to be had to be sure, but it is definitely on my short list of disappointing Final Fantasy games.

Batman Arkham City

2 years after Rocksteady did the unthinkable, create a comic book inspired video game that was not only worth playing, it was an outright game of the year contender in the eyes of many, myself included.

On the surface Arkham City may look like a sandbox style game, and in a way it is, you are free to explore the city turned prison called Arkham City, though plot areas are blocked off until you obtain the required gadgets to get by the obstructions. There are villains scattered through the City, each with their own agenda, which actually creates some scenarios where they are going after each other. It leads to a very compelling story, and I don’t mean in a ‘this is a comic book game’ compelling, I mean compelling by any standards. Honestly, the story here is great.

Perhaps the strongest element of Batman Arkham Asylum was the Free Flow combat system, which really brought the brawler type game play to a whole new level, gone are the button mashing days replaced by a timing/reaction system that is EASILY, by FAR, the most satisfying hand-to-hand combat I’ve seen. It basically amounts building up a combo, until you get a large enough combo to unlock the ability to unleash a special move. The move set in Arkham City has increased substantially, including quick access to various gadgets and new takedowns and other combo moves, so much so that it is hard to remember the buttons to do what you want to do sometimes. At least that was my experience in my first play through. I’m sure the more time you spend with it and the combat challenge modes this would become more natural. There are different enemies and weapons that change the way that you have to fight them, for example you can’t punch a guy with a shield, you have to vault over him and attack from the air, this helps strengthen the fact that you’re not button mashing here, it almost feels like a fast paced puzzle a lot of the time. The most important thing to note here, is that it makes you feel like a bad ass. You are the Batman.

The stealth rooms are back though not a lot has changed, though I did find them quite a bit harder, and the henchmen don’t always naturally path through ambush areas which makes it a little bit more difficult. They’re fun enough for variety, and as a change of pace from time to time.

There are a ton of Riddler collectibles and side missions, most of them are pretty fun, and they all have their own short side story, I loved the mad hatter one, I wish there was more of that. And I surprisingly had a lot of fun with the ‘AR Challenges’, which basically amounts to ring races through Arkham City using Batman’s traversal abilities, they were fun and challenging, just another way to make sure you know that you are batman. This also unlocks an ability that makes traversal much easier, don’t make the same mistake I did and do the first set of these as soon as possible.

I’ve finished the game but I don’t feel like I’m done with Arkham City, I’m hoping there is more DLC then the skins and challenge rooms coming, though the story does wrap up quite neatly, there appears to be lots of arcs that could be developed further. This is the best game I’ve played so far this year (at the time of this writing I have also finished uncharted 3), and a big congratulations and thank you to Rocksteady Games for their efforts on this title. If you like action games do not miss this.

Box Art

As the box art so clearly announces, from the creators of Doom and Quake, this was a no-brainer for me to play. Nevermind the similarities drawn to Borderlands, and Fallout (they took more than they should have), both games that I enjoyed.

First mistake, getting this game on PC, knowing iD’s track record, I figured getting this game on PC was the safest thing in the world to do. I guess not, It’s shaky PC launch has been well documented, me being the new owner of an AMD 6970 was definitely a victim. By the time I beat the game, there were patches, and new drivers that resolved most of the problems, and so the game is certainly playable at this point, but, how often that games launch in a broken state at this point is quite disheartening.

After the patches the “texture pop-in” and “screen tearing” issues have been minimized, and the game does look and sound quite good.

Anyway, onto the game, one of the unfortunate traits this game took from borderlands was the lack of story, but it is even more apparent here, unlike borderlands the characters lack any sort of charm and don’t even bother trying to convince or motivate you to help them, you just have to in order to progress. Story has not be a strength of iD’s anyway, so I wasn’t totally shocked by this, but it terribly disappointing nonetheless. They do provide a little back story to explain that you are the worlds last barrier to extinction but to call it hollow would be an understatement. This game has a worse ending than even borderlands did, not just because the story conclusion was incredibly abrupt, and completely anticlimactic. In fact I kept saving my ammo for the BFG for a big bad guy who never came, this game had no big villain to speak of at all, at least you knew you were fighting the boss in borderlands…

On the other hand, iD’s strength has always been creating a satisfying shooter, and boy is that obvious here. There is definitely a fast paced shooter with a bunch of weapons and good shooting mechanics that is incredibly fun to play. In fact I’m comfortable saying that the shooting in this game has been the most fun I’ve played in a while. Lots of weapons to choose from, and to bolster those numbers, most weapons have alternate ammo that give different effects. For example, your shotgun has “pulse” ammo, and “pop rock”(?). The pulse ammo provides an electric shock and is particularly helpful against enemies with shields, while the pop ammo explodes and is just straight up fun. They did a great job at limited the amount of ammo you find, which sort of creates an artificial challenge since you may not have the right bullets to handle a particular scenario cleanly.

The world constucts itself much like an RPG, there is an open world where you can drive around and explore though besides a few ‘jump challenges’ where you have to launch your vehicle into some floating thing for the reward of an item, there isn’t much reason to go off the beaten path here. And quest hubs where you can meet the locals (but there isn’t much reason too, they lack charm). You get some quests and you can shop for ammo, and upgrades, participate in races, and minigames that are mostly around winning extra money, and a quite fun ‘collectable card game’, where you use cards that you find out in the world to build a small deck and play. The quests always lead you to dungeons where you actually get to fight things. Most of the dungeons are reused in job board side quests, but it’s handled in a way that it doesn’t feel so much like recycled content. Though they are quite linear, often times ‘things happen’ while you’re in there to change the landscape, or you run through the backwards and the enemies are different when you return. It doesn’t necessarily feel recycled like it does in say Dragons Age 2.

There is looting in this game, but you rarely find anything other than money or ammo on enemies. There is a crafting system, but most of the elements you need to craft things is found in the environment so exploring is encouraged and I found myself doing a lot of it, and it is rewarding when you’re in a ‘dungeon’ and you run out of EMP grenades or ammo that you can make as you need it. But it does feel like you are limited in what you can make but they often provide you with the things you need in an given dungeon if you’re looking.

Getting around the world of RAGE is easy and sort of fun thanks to some rather clean driving mechanics, which is reflected in the racing side quests, which ultimately reward you with upgrades for your cars, or in some cases new cars for required races for progression. Thought I didn’t play through all of the race challenges, I didn’t find the ones I did challenging at all, which is a shame because the vehicles and racing mechanics aren’t bad, in fact they are good despite the WASD controls for driving which felt archaic to me. If they were more challenging I think I may have been motivated to complete them.

This game definitely falls into the more fun than good category, the mechanics are great and it’s fun to play. I just wish that they had taken more care in fleshing out the world, and the characters to give the game some depth. I’d say if you can get this at budget pricing via steam sale or used bin or something, definitely do it, there is enough fun to be had here, but it is missing motivation here to pay full price in my opinion.