Kay I just watched the Secret Ending on YouTube because I'm not doing all that crap with finding all those monsters. I think it was the part saying I have to do Academia 500 AF and get to one specific platform to spawn one specific monster that made me go "nuh-uh, not going to happen." Especially since this monster won't spawn if you kill some other two types of monsters. smurf that.

I have 159 Fragments and I've seen all Paradox Endings. There's no reason at all the Bestiary thing should matter at all or contribute to the SECRET ENDING.

Caius is still alive? That's kind of weird. So we just destroyed the Heart of Chaos but not him? How does that work? I would hope LR will explain but we'll see.

I just figured though, while the mood is upon me, I should talk about this game.

This game was...more fun to play than XIII, that much is true. At the same time, you might have noticed I have a rather bipolar take on the game. That's because the game itself is bipolar. It will be nice to you and then it will slap you across the face. It will be serious with horrific death and chaos all around and then a sexy chocobo lady will dance for you. XIII-2 will be a melodrama and then it will be a comedy. Someone said that XIII-2 was Square throwing trout at a wall and seeing what stuck and that is a very apt summary.

Now, when this game was "on' it was frickin' ON. It could be funny, it could be sad, it could be a really cool thing to explore. Seeing Academia 400 AF vs. Academia 4XX AF for example is pretty much the best way to do time travel by showing just how much you can change things. On the other hand, most of the environments were just palette swaps with no real differences. I still can't get over there are two entirely different versions of Massif with those stupid Ruby of Grief things. It's pointless. I don't know who had the bright idea to give the worst location in the game the largest number of "variations."

I said earlier that A Dying World was fantastic and I stand by that. It's probably the best part of the game. That whole section from Academia 4XX AF through New Bodhum 700 AF was great. I liked the couple times in the game when your heroes' omnipotent time travel powers were revoked and they were stuck at certain spots.

Noel is pretty much the star of the game. I was surprised how much I legitimately came to care about him. He has one helluva backstory that is both interesting and sad. In fact, I might as well say the "Dying World Trio" are the stars of the game. It's no wonder A Dying World is my favorite part of the game as it's all centered on Noel, Caius and Yeul. They're all pretty interesting and sympathetic and also enigmatic in the latter two's case. Well, I guess 700 AF Yeul wasn't all that enigmatic.

As for Serah...well, she's okay I guess. I never felt strongly about her one way or another. I will give her this, the fact she shut the hell up about Lightning eventually made me like her a lot more. All the yappin' about "I GOTTA FIND LIGHTNING!!!" at first made me sick. Later on though she realized "oh yeah, the world is doomed, maybe we should try and fix that." That was good. It made me respect her and Noel a lot more when they set their minds to actual worthwhile endeavors like preventing Cocoon fallinga nd ending humanity.

I still maintain the fact this game completely fails to follow up on Alyssa's betrayal is BS. It's actually really intriguing the more I go over it but I'm giving it far more attention than the actual game does. I don't care if it is foreshadowed and I don't care if in the Datalog there is a 10.000 word essay about why she betrayed them. I care about what the game shows me and what the game shows me is that Serah and Noel forget all about that a few seconds after it happened, which means I myself should forget it because that's what the game thinks of the plot point. Honestly, her tragic tale could use a Fix Fic with a narrative that actually cares about her.

At the end of the day, I would say XIII-2 is a game I'd gladly replay over FFXIII, and it had some great moments, but I would much rather revisit XIII for the story and characters. Maybe I should just watch the cutscenes on YT and spare myself a lot of the pain.

Also, as is my custom, my Top 5 Favorite Songs: (note that Crazy Chocobo transcends all things and thus it isn't fair to include it here)

Noel's Theme - I don't know much about "feels" but this set an amazing mood.

Village and Void - Oerba always gets the best music. Although I always kinda was "what?" when the lady singing got to four boddings.


Threat Level Omega - It's kinda sad this theme got trumped by a variation of Caius' Theme for most of Academia 400 AF. When you first arrive there and this is playing as all hell breaks lose, it sets a much more...I dunno, "intense" atmosphere. It's a thoroughly underrated piece.

Paradox - The central "trout's got real" theme. It does its job very well.

Last Hunter - This game has a lot of great battle music but this is my favorite. Well for normal battle themes I mean.

I also left off Caius' Theme because it's just too much of an obvious choiceI think. It's amazing and definitely one of the best songs in the game.

Overall Score of Final Fantasy XIII-2: Let's see, if we take at least 80 Fragments being total BS and 80 Fragments being a legitimate challenge, and then subtract points for every time Brain Blast threw a question at me like "Odds or Evens" or "Heads or Tails" and made me start over becauseof that, yet we add the voice of Liam O'Brien, I think we end up with a reasonable score of B.

I'll see you all in a couple weeks when I can buy Lightning Returns. I still have my doubts that a game where I can only play as Lightning could be anything but absolute trash but XIII-2 surprised me and maybe LR will as well.