Well this was an interesting experience. The one question I've been asked about it a lot is how it stacks up against FFXIII properly. The short answer is that with the exception of world building and music, I felt it was overall, better than XIII, but still a so-so title. The long answer will likely be the rest of this post.

I remember after XIII was released that one of the developers mentioned that FFXIII had enough cut content that they could make another game, and I am of the opinion that XIII-2 is that game. Barring the battle system. The locations, enemies, and other mechanics all feel like places and stuff from the original game. New Bohdum pretty much looks like he one seen in XIII. I wouldn't know because we never got to explore it, but it looks the same just playable and with a new sky line. The various Pulse locations feel like areas that got cut for one reason or another. Atlas was the Titan fight that got cut from the original game. Gogmagog is a reskinned Orphan. Hell, I wouldn't even be surprised if Noel's design was based off an unused design of Fang back when she was still a man in the planning stage. Even Serah is playable and considering she was a cut playable character from XIII originally, I be they re-used what hey had done for her play-style. About he only things that feels like they were new was things were tied to DLC like Serendipity and the Colosseum, and of course our three new characters of Alyssa, Caius, and Yeul. I find it amusing that while Caius' design was based off Amano's character design of Leon from FFII, bu Yeul is seriously sporting an outfit that is easily inspired by Yuna's gunslinger outfit from X-2. I'm no saying that re-using or using assets that were cut is a bad hing here, but I was more annoyed that XIII-2 didn't really have that many unique locations. I mean thankfully i wasn't a complete re-use of XIII's locations, we only got o see Vile Peaks and Oerba again, but i felt like the devs took he six or seven locations they cut out and simply applied a sky box weather filter to split the difference so hey could only need o use assets that were already finished. Even the weather mechanic was something XIII played with but never utilized very well, and I can't say XIII-2 succeeded either, but I get the feeling it was something he original team had wanted to do in XIII that simply got toned down o a gimmick because the direction of the game made it no worth it.

The battle system saw the most positive improvements in my mind. Making Stagger a less important mechanic in normal battles, a more restrictive role system that makes you really need to plan out party composition, and the monster collecting aspect made the battle system feel more zippy, tactical where it needed to be, and overall it felt less like a mindless chore since I wasn't just switching back and forth between staggering and healing. Hell, once you start unlocking the -ara and higher tier of spells, a full RAV team could easily mop the floor of trash mobs in a few seconds, making grinding more bearable. The monster system was a neat idea and felt like it took some ideas from DQV. My biggest issues with it was the fact that monsters required items to level up. Sure it gave you something o do with gil, but i made some of the Late Bloomer classes a no-go because their stats took forever to catch up. Twilight Odin is an example of a monster that looks cool and I wanted to use, but grinding expensive leveling materials for mediocre returns because the real gains wouldn't kick in until he was in the 70+ range was just a chore. Hell, if my one fave RAV monster didn't have a weakness o a certain element that became very dominant by endgame, I would have used him for the final battle. Instead, I switched him out for a late game monster I found that was an early peaked type, but had better stas with 100+ in all his stats compared o my old monster, twice the HP, and no discernible weakness with comparable skills. It just kind of sucked to invest a lot in a monster only to pick up one a few hours later that was better in almost every way. Kind of reminded me of why I never liked FFX's weapon system, but I'll get to that rant when I get to that playthrough. I was also not a huge fan of the random encounter mechanic. It managed to make random encounters more annoying since some maps were simply designed for you to get into a fight whether you wanted to or no. And it got really annoying in Augusta Tower or Academia 400 AF where you are trying to either figure out where to go or solving a puzzle and getting interrupted every seven to ten seconds by monsters spawning on op of you in narrow corridors or having such a massive aggro zone that running was pointless. I did like how the Crystarium was re-imagined, and was amused that someone in the dev team came to the same conclusion I did that it would be better to choose a role to level up every level up instead of just have static roles to arbitrarily level.

In terms of the narrative... Well it's certainly a Toriyama/Watanabe collab with all the issues that brings. To get the positives out of the way: All of the major characters were either likable or inoffensive. No one was really grating even if the dialogue go a bit pretentious by the end. Even returning characters I wasn't in love with were surprisingly more decent in this game with Hope getting special note here since I can't stand him in the first game and he's actually not a bad character here. I do feel like there were a lot of missed opportunities here. Alyssa is probably the poster child as her motive and story arc is really interesting, but never gets any real pay off outside of a paradox ending you may never bother to see if you weren't in love with the game. Her and Fal'Cie Adam would have been more interesting as protagonists of the plot. Not that Caius is a bad villain, my friend certainly over-hyped him and I feel he falls short in a lo of areas, but to his credit, he would be a great villain if XIII-2's plot didn't run on stupidity. I will not mourn Etro's death in the XIII trilogy, in fact If I had the ability in the game to follow her to whatever afterlife awaits people outside of the Unseen Realm, I would follow her there and kill her again because this goddess is the cause of like 90% of the problems in XIII's world. Everything about Caius' story just feels contrived. He's immortal, but he can actually be perma killed (well sort of) and have his powers passed on to someone else but how do we even know this? And why is Noel the only candidate? You mean to tell me after a thousand years of living only Noel measured up? Likewise, why did Etro give Caius her heart? The easiest solution to this whole tragedy was for her to give Yuel the heart. I mean the girl is suppose to die young anyway, might as well just make her immortal so she doesn't have to deal with this reincarnation bulltrout and then she wouldn't really need a bodyguard. Likewise, why are we protecting Yeul to begin with if she's fated to die anyway? Why are we collecting her prophecies? Apparently it was a Fal'Cie thing but we're not given a real explanation. We also never get a real reason as to why Serah was given the Eyes of Etro either. What made her special compared to say... Dajh who was in the same boat as her in FFXIII?

The whole tragedy of the story just feels so manufactured. The whole Coccon thing was also just silly. Like I can understand the initial Fal'Cie Adam thing where yes, the easiest solution would be o turn the power on back in Coccon to get it to fly, but wouldn't the next best solution be to just get rid of it altogether? You mean to tell me that in 500 years and with Jetson level tech, humanity couldn't have just dismantled most of it and tactfully destroy the rest? Likewise, what was the point of the second Cocoon? Like I get that we need to save all he people who decided that making their city right beneath a death trap, but again, you had 500 years to move humanity to the other side of the planet, and again, you could have destroyed it piece meal style to reduce the environmental impact. And don't give me this, "we had to protect Vanille and Fang, the ending clearly shows they could just go in and secure their crystal cores to keep them alive. There were so many easier solutions with plenty of time to resolve the issue. Why did we have to pick the most contrived solution?

Likewise, the returning characters not named Hope were disappointing in how little screen time they had and how a lot of their own plotlines were locked away in DLC. XV ges trout on for doing the same thing, but I would argue it's a lot worse here since I don't know what he hell was going on with Sazh, Snow just bowed out halfway through the plot and went bumming in an arena, and Lightning's biggest character moment happens off screen unless you had the DLC. The service model design of this game does it no favors, especially since it also has the cardinal sin of having all he best shi in in for gameplay as well meaning its a bit pay to win as well.

The music was also not great. Felt like they were trying too hard to be like Persona with the vocal tracks everywhere. The lone exception is Noel's Theme, which is not only a great track, bu the original sequence it plays in is certainly a high point of the game. The rest was forgettable, with the exception of the returning tracks of which I am never going to be rid of that awful Sunlyth Waterscape theme I don't like.

Overall, I found the gameplay to better than the first game despite still having some issues. The characters are okay, but the plot is still melodramatic garbage. I find the most fascinating part of the game is the design that feels like the team trying to see how much they could do with leftover assets. Suffice to say, I'm now dreading going into the final game in the series, especially since Lightning looks to be going full edge lord. XIII had an interesting premise, bu the games have gone in so many bad directions, that I find it hard to believe there is any way to salvage it for me at this point. I guess I'll just have to take the plunge and find out I guess.