When I first heard that Square Enix was developing Final Fantasy XIII-2, I was a little apprehensive. The naming structure reminded me all too well of Final Fantasy X-2, a spinoff that pretty much objectified the women in the PlayStation 2 original.
Thankfully, we're not going down that route here. Instead, we're getting something of a bona fide sequel that expands on the storyline of the original Final Fantasy XIII. So that's nice. What's more, it appears that the Japanese development team has been listening to concerns made about the 2009 corridor-fest and is aiming to address them. Here are the facts that you need to know.
What I Saw: Final Fantasy XIII-2 focuses on heroine Lightning once more, but this particular E3 demo centred on her sister Serah and her adventures on Cocoon with a chap called Noel. They're investigating some strange time and space paradoxes that are taking place around the city, and they begin in this demo in the Bresha Ruins.
There's a few firsts here - the most obvious being that it's Noel's first time on the colonial bubble that is Cocoon. More interesting is that we get to meet Mog, a Moogle that follows Serah around and acts as her weapon of choice. Dive into a battle and the big-nosed creature transforms into a bow.
Exploring Bresha leads to an encounter with a massive robot hand that's trying to break through from what appears to be another dimension. It belongs to a hardcore boss creature known as Atlas, a weapon built by humans but looks like it was created using Gran Pulse technology.
A second, much shorter demonstration - which was not available to see on the E3 show floor - was a boss battle featuring Lightning. The Final Fantasy XIII heroine is riding on her Odin summon against a dark rainy plain as she tries to fight off a pursuit from a Chaos Bahamut creature. Her curious new armour was not explained.
Familiar Gameplay: This is more of an evolution, not a revolution in gameplay. Almost everything you knew about the battle mechanics and free-roaming features in Final Fantasy XIII will ring true in this sequel. So if you're wondering whether Square Enix may have ditched the Paradigm Shift system, you're out of luck son. Fortunately, the developer tells me that the combat system was quite popular with the fans so it stands to reason that the team wouldn't mess with it.
Cinematic Actions: That's not to say everything is exactly the same. I did see a few new battle moves within Noel's Commander and Serah's Ravager paradigms, and a new feature has been added called Cinematic Actions. Basically these are Quick Time Events that occur whenever you whittle down an enemy's health bar to a certain degree, and usually take place during boss fights.
Press the right buttons at the correct time and you can deal some proper bonus damage. Noel ran up the fingers of Atlas' rogue temporal-rifting hand and was able to smash the top of it for a 900+ attack.
Further Tweaks: During the free-roaming adventure areas of the game, you'll be able to jump over certain obstacles. Not quite sure how this will be useful really - hopefully it won't turn the action-RPG into more of a platformer. As you explore the world of Cocoon you can bear witness to 'live events' that work like background cutscenes.
Whenever you encounter enemies in the game world a Mog Clock feature kicks in - if you are able to approach and make the first attack on the baddie while the timer at the bottom of the screen is green, you get a first advantage in battle. If it's yellow, you gain no advantage and if it's red, the enemy gangs up on you. When the Mog Clock appears, a circular boundary appears around your character - if the timer runs out and you have no enemy in your sights, you can avoid fighting.
What is rather cool in Final Fantasy XIII-2 is the ability to have NPCs help you during battle. You can even recruit enemy monsters found in the field. I wasn't told exactly what conditions have to be met in order to capture a monster, but once you do it can be your battle bitch in any given combat situation.
Temporal Rift: At one stage in the demo, Noel and Serah are pulled into a temporal rift in which they have to escape. This is where Final Fantasy turns into a little bit of a puzzle game - you get a bird's eye view of a grid-like stage, and you have to move from square to square in order to collect all the crystals and reach the goal marker.
Moving away from a square makes it disappear though, so you have to think about where and how you move around the map to progress to the exit portal. Getting out of this time labyrinth will put you back in the traditional game world. It's a bold addition to the gameplay, but it offers a nice enough break from the monster-bashing.
Live Trigger: Perhaps the most interesting thing in the Final Fantasy XIII-2 feature list is the Live Trigger - key moments where you must select a course of action by pressing one of the face buttons. In the demo, you're faced with a choice of attacking Atlas in his full form, or access a device that will aim to weaken it slightly before you engage in combat.
You better make sure your party is beefed up nice and proper if you choose the first option, because the skyscraper-sized colossus will happily hand your ass to your mama if you aren't. Opting to weaken Atlas will result in his mighty hand grabbing your party and dragging you into the Temporal Rift...
Thankfully, we're not going down that route here. Instead, we're getting something of a bona fide sequel that expands on the storyline of the original Final Fantasy XIII. So that's nice. What's more, it appears that the Japanese development team has been listening to concerns made about the 2009 corridor-fest and is aiming to address them. Here are the facts that you need to know.
What I Saw: Final Fantasy XIII-2 focuses on heroine Lightning once more, but this particular E3 demo centred on her sister Serah and her adventures on Cocoon with a chap called Noel. They're investigating some strange time and space paradoxes that are taking place around the city, and they begin in this demo in the Bresha Ruins.
There's a few firsts here - the most obvious being that it's Noel's first time on the colonial bubble that is Cocoon. More interesting is that we get to meet Mog, a Moogle that follows Serah around and acts as her weapon of choice. Dive into a battle and the big-nosed creature transforms into a bow.
Exploring Bresha leads to an encounter with a massive robot hand that's trying to break through from what appears to be another dimension. It belongs to a hardcore boss creature known as Atlas, a weapon built by humans but looks like it was created using Gran Pulse technology.
A second, much shorter demonstration - which was not available to see on the E3 show floor - was a boss battle featuring Lightning. The Final Fantasy XIII heroine is riding on her Odin summon against a dark rainy plain as she tries to fight off a pursuit from a Chaos Bahamut creature. Her curious new armour was not explained.
Familiar Gameplay: This is more of an evolution, not a revolution in gameplay. Almost everything you knew about the battle mechanics and free-roaming features in Final Fantasy XIII will ring true in this sequel. So if you're wondering whether Square Enix may have ditched the Paradigm Shift system, you're out of luck son. Fortunately, the developer tells me that the combat system was quite popular with the fans so it stands to reason that the team wouldn't mess with it.
Cinematic Actions: That's not to say everything is exactly the same. I did see a few new battle moves within Noel's Commander and Serah's Ravager paradigms, and a new feature has been added called Cinematic Actions. Basically these are Quick Time Events that occur whenever you whittle down an enemy's health bar to a certain degree, and usually take place during boss fights.
Press the right buttons at the correct time and you can deal some proper bonus damage. Noel ran up the fingers of Atlas' rogue temporal-rifting hand and was able to smash the top of it for a 900+ attack.
Further Tweaks: During the free-roaming adventure areas of the game, you'll be able to jump over certain obstacles. Not quite sure how this will be useful really - hopefully it won't turn the action-RPG into more of a platformer. As you explore the world of Cocoon you can bear witness to 'live events' that work like background cutscenes.
Whenever you encounter enemies in the game world a Mog Clock feature kicks in - if you are able to approach and make the first attack on the baddie while the timer at the bottom of the screen is green, you get a first advantage in battle. If it's yellow, you gain no advantage and if it's red, the enemy gangs up on you. When the Mog Clock appears, a circular boundary appears around your character - if the timer runs out and you have no enemy in your sights, you can avoid fighting.
What is rather cool in Final Fantasy XIII-2 is the ability to have NPCs help you during battle. You can even recruit enemy monsters found in the field. I wasn't told exactly what conditions have to be met in order to capture a monster, but once you do it can be your battle bitch in any given combat situation.
Temporal Rift: At one stage in the demo, Noel and Serah are pulled into a temporal rift in which they have to escape. This is where Final Fantasy turns into a little bit of a puzzle game - you get a bird's eye view of a grid-like stage, and you have to move from square to square in order to collect all the crystals and reach the goal marker.
Moving away from a square makes it disappear though, so you have to think about where and how you move around the map to progress to the exit portal. Getting out of this time labyrinth will put you back in the traditional game world. It's a bold addition to the gameplay, but it offers a nice enough break from the monster-bashing.
Live Trigger: Perhaps the most interesting thing in the Final Fantasy XIII-2 feature list is the Live Trigger - key moments where you must select a course of action by pressing one of the face buttons. In the demo, you're faced with a choice of attacking Atlas in his full form, or access a device that will aim to weaken it slightly before you engage in combat.
You better make sure your party is beefed up nice and proper if you choose the first option, because the skyscraper-sized colossus will happily hand your ass to your mama if you aren't. Opting to weaken Atlas will result in his mighty hand grabbing your party and dragging you into the Temporal Rift...
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Comments
HookeyStreet 28 Jun 2011 10:07
1/1
Oh no, not more of this rubbish!! FF XIII was terrible. I have lost all faith in Square Enix.