Final Fantasy XIII-2 Review 1st Hour

After picking up the newest FF last week I had no time at all to pop in the lone disk (unlike 3 for FF13) and examine the reworked game Square Enix supposedly fixed from their last installment.

After playing through the first hour I wasn't sure what to think of the game but hopefully some of what I say here makes sense.

We begin with a gorgeous pre-rendered cut-scene which blew my mind and helped introduced the conflict between Lightning and Caius in the limbo world of Valhalla. Unfortunetly the graphics take a huge nose dive into a tutorial fight mode where you once again just spam "auto cast" to defeat Caius in a mock battle. The game does introduce a new quick time event battle where you are given a choice between two battle decisions.

The graphics vary from wonderful, to a shaky loss of frames. I will have to play more of it to decide whether it gets better or if they somehow disappoint me with a terrible consistency in which case FF13 looked better. The main thing for me is that the battle visuals are very appealing which is to say I play this game for its battles and not it's story or world navigation graphics.

The one thing that received a nice fixing was the battle system's paradigm switch, no longer does it take FOREVER to switch roles, which is the main mechanic for combat it seems. Selecting "AutoCast" is the sure way to fight, but I will have to see later on if it comes down to actually selecting spells or just making sure your in the right paradigm to beat the bosses.

Lightning is better imo.

In FF-2 you play as Serah, and apparently everything thinks that Lightning is dead, but since Lightning is on the front of the game package this is a poor attempt to immerse us and is more likely to confuse us of who our protagonist is. Serah can't seem believe what is real and what is a dream from her past, until Noel appears. So far, Noel acts as a messenger from the future who's sole purpose is to guide Serah to Lightning, he may lack much depth but he is more popular in my mind than the weak character that is Serah. I find myself not caring for Serah, but instead I wonder what happened to Snow, Lightning, and the rest of the gang. I will continue to play the game whenever I find time, but this will be competing with R.E. Revelations, SCV, and various other games that are left unbeaten in my inventory.

I am not a fan of the creature that goes Kupo.

A midst the general speculation that the game is "a letdown", I will play through it with the hope that the story is decent since I am already happy with how the game no longer forces you to travel down a narrow tube of a path to reach destinations.

 Revised post to come when I dive deeper into Final Fantasy 13-2

~Djr7