Mot Wakorb
09-21-2011, 09:44 AM
http://na.square-enix.com/ffxiii-2/assets/img/logo.final-fantasy-xiii-2.png
I’ll be honest - when I was asked to play Final Fantasy XIII-2, I wasn’t necessarily going in with a good feeling. When I played Final Fantasy XIII, I was quite disappointed with the “tunnel crawl” environments and what seemed like a lack of depth to the game as a whole. When I confronted the developer I had a chance to speak with about this, he deadpanned to me “what do you mean? It totally was an open world”, followed by “yeah, we made some mistakes with the last game, but I think you’ll come away with a different feeling.” I most definitely came away with a different feeling.
When I began playing, it was clear something had happened, and indeed, something had. The wreckage of Cocoon and Pulse was scattered all around. The game takes place a few years after Final Fantasy XIII and many of the people are just as scattered. No more are people afraid of coming into contact with Pulse as the worlds eventually collided over time. Now the world faces a new issue - things are quite unstable and rifts are opening between dimensions, bringing horrible things into the world.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6177/6165543103_fffaeaa21d.jpg
Our new heroes in Final Fantasy XIII-2
You play as Lightning’s sister, Serah, who is attempting to find her older sister, Lightning, the first game’s protagonist. She has mysteriously disappeared and left no clues behind as to where she went. Joining Serah is Noel, another mysterious character who has appeared without explanation. Serah also has one extra companion, a clear throwback to older Final Fantasy games - a moogle. There was no mistaking this moogle either, it looked and sounded like moogles from previous Final Fantasy games - no artistic changes, no “reimagining” here. The only thing that really changed about the moogle from previous games was that it could also become Serah’s weapon (either a bow or sword based on proximity) and would find hidden treasures as we went on (more on that later).
The demo that I was given began in the second chapter of the story, leaving quite a bit of information unknown. The first city I started in, Bresha, was in ruins but can be traversed freely. That was the first thing I noticed as I took control. The entire area was free to be traveled - no tunnels to be crawled here, there were multiple paths to the goal I need to get to. Another thing was a map system that helped me find where I needed to go with markings for characters or interesting locations. While exploring and speaking to various soldiers and people, a disturbance is happening - a creature is partially phased into the world and is causing havoc - and Atlas, as it was called in-game, was a formidable foe that on my first fight with it took an airship barrage to break our battle.
Traversing Bresha itself was nice - no longer did I feel I was in a tunnel, everything felt very open and while damaged, welcoming. NPCs spoke rather than just pop text on the screen, some NPCs will follow and fight/hold monsters off the party as I was exploring. Another neat feature is that occasionally, your moogle will start freaking out and find a treasure chest or story item. It adds a new dimension to treasure chest hunting that I found quite refreshing.
One other thing that was changed in the overworld is that your players can now jump at the press of a button. I was told that this wasn’t to turn the game into a platformer, but rather add another dimension of exploration - sometimes jumping is the only way to get to another place. It didn’t feel out of place, it felt like the game was simply trying to give me more exploration options as I played.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6164/6165543497_f13dded584.jpg
The battle system remains largely untouched from Final Fantasy XIII. Whether or not that’s good or bad is more up to the player, as a whole, I didn’t mind the battle system/paradigms that existed. Much of the leveling is identical - battle ratings, battle timers, crystal points, they were all the same. Admittedly, the developer we spoke with noted that there is more of a development system that was announced at TGS recently, but when we played we weren’t given any insight into how leveling has changed in the latest game.
One thing that has majorly changed from Final Fantasy XIII is that monsters can be collected and used in battle. The second chapter of the game only had Serah and Noel as playable characters, but once the first battle was over, I had gained a behemoth and flan as possible party members. The next battle that took place, the flan automatically took the third slot up until the time I had made a paradigm shift, once that happened, the behemoth took over.
Additionally, each monster has a “feral-link” gauge that filled as they attacked the enemy. Each monster in your party has a different gauge fill speed - the flan was easily faster while the behemoth took longer, but did more damage once I activated their feral-link. The feral-link is used by hitting a button to activate a quicktime event which caused more damage to the enemy in question. The feral-link quicktime event felt good, giving the players more to do than just mash a single button by the end of the game. The developers clearly wanted to give the players more to do as they fought.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6162/6166076764_48d77314b5.jpg
The monster system didn’t have much explanation with the demo I had a chance to play. Square-Enix chose to keep some details out until the Tokyo Game Show. That said, there are ways to level your monsters and swap them in and out of your party, the feature just wasn’t ready yet in our demo. What we could be told was that there was well over 100 monsters available, I was given a number of 150-200.
Entering those battles has changed entirely as well. Much like Final Fantasy XIII, monsters are out in the world (and in this case, in the town area you start in). When you approach, the “mog clock” appears, which starts a countdown timer to a possible battle. At this point, you have options. You can opt to run or fight. If you choose to fight, much like Final Fantasy XIII, you could gain a preemptive strike. This time however, the developers chose a different method - there is a clock that appears with three distinct timing areas. Hit the monster in the green, you have a preemptive strike. Hit the monster when the gauge is yellow and begin a standard battle, and if the gauge reaches red, the monsters will gain the upper hand by gaining haste while you are slowed. It definitely makes it easier to decide how you want to enter battle and makes it much clearer than Final Fantasy XIII did on when you’re going to get your chance to strike first.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6175/6165544711_b4967fea78.jpg
Larger fights have changed slightly as well. While the structure remains intact of how a battle plays out, some fights will change over to a “cinematic action sequence”. The camera changes completely and the fight adds in some quicktime events. In the case of an early fight, one of Atlas’s hands decided to grab my characters and the game changed - the camera angle changed, and I was forced to do various quicktime events that would change how the fight went. I was asked to fail once on purpose - there is a penalty for doing so, but none that would be considered a one-shot kill, just something that could definitely impact your ability to fight within that battle. It was another refreshing change that modified the formula and gave the player more control. In the case of this fight, my characters had their health halved - making that fight just a little tougher for me to win.
Finally, one more little touch that was added are minigames. Previous Final Fantasy games have had minigames and this one was no exception. My party was pulled into an alternate reality that I needed to find my way out of. In this case, it was a puzzle. I needed to get to an exit, however, I needed to collect crystals on my way out. The puzzle was very much a one-way puzzle. As I stepped off of each tile, it would disappear, giving me no way to return to the start. The only penalty for failing was a restart of that puzzle at this time - it wasn’t clear if there was more of a penalty that could be incurred later on. The one-way puzzle minigame had a few different levels that increased in difficulty as I went on. Finally, as I completed the last puzzle, I was allowed to return to the main world, where the story continued.
Technically speaking, the game is gorgeous. Fortunately for the developers, the engine itself is hardly modified from the Final Fantasy XIII engine - so they could focus on story and gameplay this time around. That said, the engine has been tuned so that players won’t be able to tell the difference between the PS3 and 360 versions of the game. The consoles were side-by-side at PAX and the only difference that I could see between two versions were the controller that the player held. This is an improvement over Final Fantasy XIII - players felt one version looked better than the other.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6157/6166076674_d8482e8d16.jpg
Our Moogle friends return and play a pretty major part in Final Fantasy XIII-2
All-in-all, I came away with a much better impression of Final Fantasy XIII-2 than I did when I played through Final Fantasy XIII. The game seems much more refined, polished, and player friendly. The developers listened to the complaints that were lodged against Final Fantasy XIII and did a bang-up job of making the game feel more like Final Fantasy. This is one I’m definitely looking forward to having a chance to play when it is released in January here in the states.
I’ll be honest - when I was asked to play Final Fantasy XIII-2, I wasn’t necessarily going in with a good feeling. When I played Final Fantasy XIII, I was quite disappointed with the “tunnel crawl” environments and what seemed like a lack of depth to the game as a whole. When I confronted the developer I had a chance to speak with about this, he deadpanned to me “what do you mean? It totally was an open world”, followed by “yeah, we made some mistakes with the last game, but I think you’ll come away with a different feeling.” I most definitely came away with a different feeling.
When I began playing, it was clear something had happened, and indeed, something had. The wreckage of Cocoon and Pulse was scattered all around. The game takes place a few years after Final Fantasy XIII and many of the people are just as scattered. No more are people afraid of coming into contact with Pulse as the worlds eventually collided over time. Now the world faces a new issue - things are quite unstable and rifts are opening between dimensions, bringing horrible things into the world.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6177/6165543103_fffaeaa21d.jpg
Our new heroes in Final Fantasy XIII-2
You play as Lightning’s sister, Serah, who is attempting to find her older sister, Lightning, the first game’s protagonist. She has mysteriously disappeared and left no clues behind as to where she went. Joining Serah is Noel, another mysterious character who has appeared without explanation. Serah also has one extra companion, a clear throwback to older Final Fantasy games - a moogle. There was no mistaking this moogle either, it looked and sounded like moogles from previous Final Fantasy games - no artistic changes, no “reimagining” here. The only thing that really changed about the moogle from previous games was that it could also become Serah’s weapon (either a bow or sword based on proximity) and would find hidden treasures as we went on (more on that later).
The demo that I was given began in the second chapter of the story, leaving quite a bit of information unknown. The first city I started in, Bresha, was in ruins but can be traversed freely. That was the first thing I noticed as I took control. The entire area was free to be traveled - no tunnels to be crawled here, there were multiple paths to the goal I need to get to. Another thing was a map system that helped me find where I needed to go with markings for characters or interesting locations. While exploring and speaking to various soldiers and people, a disturbance is happening - a creature is partially phased into the world and is causing havoc - and Atlas, as it was called in-game, was a formidable foe that on my first fight with it took an airship barrage to break our battle.
Traversing Bresha itself was nice - no longer did I feel I was in a tunnel, everything felt very open and while damaged, welcoming. NPCs spoke rather than just pop text on the screen, some NPCs will follow and fight/hold monsters off the party as I was exploring. Another neat feature is that occasionally, your moogle will start freaking out and find a treasure chest or story item. It adds a new dimension to treasure chest hunting that I found quite refreshing.
One other thing that was changed in the overworld is that your players can now jump at the press of a button. I was told that this wasn’t to turn the game into a platformer, but rather add another dimension of exploration - sometimes jumping is the only way to get to another place. It didn’t feel out of place, it felt like the game was simply trying to give me more exploration options as I played.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6164/6165543497_f13dded584.jpg
The battle system remains largely untouched from Final Fantasy XIII. Whether or not that’s good or bad is more up to the player, as a whole, I didn’t mind the battle system/paradigms that existed. Much of the leveling is identical - battle ratings, battle timers, crystal points, they were all the same. Admittedly, the developer we spoke with noted that there is more of a development system that was announced at TGS recently, but when we played we weren’t given any insight into how leveling has changed in the latest game.
One thing that has majorly changed from Final Fantasy XIII is that monsters can be collected and used in battle. The second chapter of the game only had Serah and Noel as playable characters, but once the first battle was over, I had gained a behemoth and flan as possible party members. The next battle that took place, the flan automatically took the third slot up until the time I had made a paradigm shift, once that happened, the behemoth took over.
Additionally, each monster has a “feral-link” gauge that filled as they attacked the enemy. Each monster in your party has a different gauge fill speed - the flan was easily faster while the behemoth took longer, but did more damage once I activated their feral-link. The feral-link is used by hitting a button to activate a quicktime event which caused more damage to the enemy in question. The feral-link quicktime event felt good, giving the players more to do than just mash a single button by the end of the game. The developers clearly wanted to give the players more to do as they fought.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6162/6166076764_48d77314b5.jpg
The monster system didn’t have much explanation with the demo I had a chance to play. Square-Enix chose to keep some details out until the Tokyo Game Show. That said, there are ways to level your monsters and swap them in and out of your party, the feature just wasn’t ready yet in our demo. What we could be told was that there was well over 100 monsters available, I was given a number of 150-200.
Entering those battles has changed entirely as well. Much like Final Fantasy XIII, monsters are out in the world (and in this case, in the town area you start in). When you approach, the “mog clock” appears, which starts a countdown timer to a possible battle. At this point, you have options. You can opt to run or fight. If you choose to fight, much like Final Fantasy XIII, you could gain a preemptive strike. This time however, the developers chose a different method - there is a clock that appears with three distinct timing areas. Hit the monster in the green, you have a preemptive strike. Hit the monster when the gauge is yellow and begin a standard battle, and if the gauge reaches red, the monsters will gain the upper hand by gaining haste while you are slowed. It definitely makes it easier to decide how you want to enter battle and makes it much clearer than Final Fantasy XIII did on when you’re going to get your chance to strike first.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6175/6165544711_b4967fea78.jpg
Larger fights have changed slightly as well. While the structure remains intact of how a battle plays out, some fights will change over to a “cinematic action sequence”. The camera changes completely and the fight adds in some quicktime events. In the case of an early fight, one of Atlas’s hands decided to grab my characters and the game changed - the camera angle changed, and I was forced to do various quicktime events that would change how the fight went. I was asked to fail once on purpose - there is a penalty for doing so, but none that would be considered a one-shot kill, just something that could definitely impact your ability to fight within that battle. It was another refreshing change that modified the formula and gave the player more control. In the case of this fight, my characters had their health halved - making that fight just a little tougher for me to win.
Finally, one more little touch that was added are minigames. Previous Final Fantasy games have had minigames and this one was no exception. My party was pulled into an alternate reality that I needed to find my way out of. In this case, it was a puzzle. I needed to get to an exit, however, I needed to collect crystals on my way out. The puzzle was very much a one-way puzzle. As I stepped off of each tile, it would disappear, giving me no way to return to the start. The only penalty for failing was a restart of that puzzle at this time - it wasn’t clear if there was more of a penalty that could be incurred later on. The one-way puzzle minigame had a few different levels that increased in difficulty as I went on. Finally, as I completed the last puzzle, I was allowed to return to the main world, where the story continued.
Technically speaking, the game is gorgeous. Fortunately for the developers, the engine itself is hardly modified from the Final Fantasy XIII engine - so they could focus on story and gameplay this time around. That said, the engine has been tuned so that players won’t be able to tell the difference between the PS3 and 360 versions of the game. The consoles were side-by-side at PAX and the only difference that I could see between two versions were the controller that the player held. This is an improvement over Final Fantasy XIII - players felt one version looked better than the other.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6157/6166076674_d8482e8d16.jpg
Our Moogle friends return and play a pretty major part in Final Fantasy XIII-2
All-in-all, I came away with a much better impression of Final Fantasy XIII-2 than I did when I played through Final Fantasy XIII. The game seems much more refined, polished, and player friendly. The developers listened to the complaints that were lodged against Final Fantasy XIII and did a bang-up job of making the game feel more like Final Fantasy. This is one I’m definitely looking forward to having a chance to play when it is released in January here in the states.