FFXIII-2 Thoughts on the Demo

I just finished the demo after spendinmg hitting 3 hours on it... that the first thing i'm saying about it, grinding much easier on this game, no need to wait for you to finish the boss fight before carrying on with levelling up. switching between party leaders at anytime is nice, i hated the fact that you couldn't change the leader til near the end, also in the last one if the leader died, everybody else died :hmph: which sucked XD that don't happen in this one, which is good XD

paradigm switching is sooo much quicker, in the last game, it took soo long sometimes that by the time u had control of the game again, you were dead :/ but on this one it instant pretty much, which number 1 made the battle flow much better and 2 i could switch paradigm at pretty much the last second when i was low on hp :)

the monster party system is pretty awesome, allowing you to have much more customization before babbles about what roles and paradigm sets you wanted before battle :D i found getting the party the way I wanted it much easier XD

finally, i wasn't expecting it but I liked having the cinematic actions in battle, it made it feel like i'm doing more during battle rather that just hitting repeat or auto battle over and over again during a battle, soo a point for that

about the mog clock and accessory, the mog clock I liked, random encounters made levelling up much better, i could just walk around a small area rather than entering and exiting a area within the game.

I bought a load hoping to equip them only to find out each accessory had an ammount of points and each character could only have a certain amount of points active at once.

accessory points, you do know you can increase them by picking the increase accessory points by 20 on the level up bonus

overall i spent 2 hours forty-five mins playing the demo once, and I could see myself playing it a few more times before the 3rd of February
 
Well overall I have to say, Improvements are good.
I like how random battles are set up.
I Like the moogle clock.
Still dk how I feel about the story though... Time travel???
The accessory points annoy me too.. But I can get use to it :)
Also I'm not sure how I feel about the new addition to the battle system... felt kinda KH2 ish to me... pressing buttons to dodge or whatever...

One more thing
"oblivion is the essence of all things" sounds like "darkness is the hearts true essence" :hmmm:
 
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I am just glad i was able to walk around and actually talk to the locals and such. The monster companion thing is interesting.
 
The new blood system(?):
In XIII-2 I noticed your characters can be wounded in battle, this takes points of your HP which you cannot reghain back in battle by simply curing. How you get these HP's back... I have no idea, but I hope you can because that would be really horrible if so.

The wounds can be healed with a wound potion. They cost 300 gil each from Chocolina. A simple read through of the datalog would have told you this :hmmm:





I didn't finish the demo, but from what I played of it, I like it so far. It overall feels better than FFXIII. I'll probably get it eventually. It's not top priority, and I have a few other games to play still.
 
Well I can definitely say there are some things I like and don't like.

The game feel more "roam-ish". Being able to go around an talk to the locals, and pretty much walk where you please gives it a more "RPG" feeling! (Something I thought lacked in Final Fantasy 13).

I like the battle system additions, the monster party is really cool. and switching between paradigm doesn't take as long as It had in FFXIII. I remember dying a few times in 13 because the switch took awhile, which I didn't enjoy.

I don't like the puzzle parts very much, then again I never did like puzzles to begin with. xD I'm not sure if I really see a point to them yet, however I suppose I can live with them.

Overall I'm very happy with what I've seen! The game def. has more feel than 13 did, which is what many people thought lacked within the game itself!
 
I just played the demo and i gotta say...

I guess all the fans got what they asked for when they wanted something from the classic final fantasy games.

Non-linear gameplay, random encounters, variety of gamestyles and missions/ side quests.

After all the hate and criticism that i read from youtube comments on Final Fantasy XIII, now that Square Enix has fixed up all the problem...i hope people won't hate the XIII series and look forward to future Final Fantasy games from Square Enix.

As for me...i loved it. I already loved Final Fantasy XIII to begin with, and XIII-2 demo was a great way to continue the game with better gameplay!
 
I didn't play FF XII, so here are my opinions thus far.

The combat is slow an uneventful. The free roam where you get to talk to random people feels a bit lacking and the random encounter feels tacked on, I much prefer seeing enemies from a distance away and deciding to either engage or avoid. It took me forever to realize that "autobattle" didn't actually mean "autobattle" it just fills your turn for you, and should be named a bit more accurately. Suffice to say, I lost interest and ended up quitting before I finished the demo.

Overall, I'm a bit "meh" on it.
 
I never played FF13 just to be clear.

Things I disliked:
VA's are even worse than Star Ocean's The last Hope.
Random encounters.
Autobattle lets the char pick the moves. I usually pressed autobattle most of the time.
The action is too fast for my taste because the camera angle is so set I can hardly see the spectaculair magic that Serah uses.
Half of the time I had no idea what I was doing.
The monsters :hmmm: early on you will get weak monsters ofcourse, but what if you find a more awesome monster near the end of the game, we still would have to level that critter up? Its hard to choose a monster to spend all those thingies on to level it up.
Blooddamage Is dreadful. The pulsework knight nearly always deal blood damage.
Didnt know about the special pots for that though. :hmmm:
Its freeking annoying random ppl talking to you/butting in their convo's when you walk near npc's.
In previous FF title's I always talked to every single npc, but in the demo I had no desire to.

likes:
The rainy effects.
The graphics.
Noel's weapons are epic.
Chocolina's sexy body.



Oh yeah the main title screen is so gurly and kiddy.
The first background music/beat is so cheesy :ness:
Later on even rap trying to beef it up. lmao it failed.
So far I dont like the music used.
 
I heard the graphics this time round aren't as good as FFXIII's - neither are the framerates. :neomon:

Some good has come out of this at least. If modern FF games can afford to sacrifice something, it's graphics. Now all they need is someone who can actually write a story. Shocking, I know!
 
So I finished the demo two days ago. Turns out you can't save so you gotta do it all in one go. :gonk:

Noel looks like he belongs in a Kingdom Hearts game, the dialogue was pretty corny especially when Mog got involved and Serah's constant moaning made me play the game on low volume just in case someone in another room thought I was watching porn. -__-

I liked the tweaks to the battle system and the use of monsters as party members in this one but those are really the only attractive points I can think of... the game's just as linear as XIII was.

I dunno if I'll get it at all. Maybe if I'm bored and it's low price.

Chocolina's sexy body.

:tehe:
 
I never played FF13 just to be clear.

Things I disliked:
VA's are even worse than Star Ocean's The last Hope.
Random encounters.
Autobattle lets the char pick the moves. I usually pressed autobattle most of the time.
The action is too fast for my taste because the camera angle is so set I can hardly see the spectaculair magic that Serah uses.
Half of the time I had no idea what I was doing.
The monsters :hmmm: early on you will get weak monsters ofcourse, but what if you find a more awesome monster near the end of the game, we still would have to level that critter up? Its hard to choose a monster to spend all those thingies on to level it up.
Blooddamage Is dreadful. The pulsework knight nearly always deal blood damage.
Didnt know about the special pots for that though. :hmmm:
Its freeking annoying random ppl talking to you/butting in their convo's when you walk near npc's.
In previous FF title's I always talked to every single npc, but in the demo I had no desire to.

likes:
The rainy effects.
The graphics.
Noel's weapons are epic.
Chocolina's sexy body.



Oh yeah the main title screen is so gurly and kiddy.
The first background music/beat is so cheesy :ness:
Later on even rap trying to beef it up. lmao it failed.
So far I dont like the music used.


Most of the time, english voice acting always suck because I don't really know.

Random encounter has always been there in previous titles, so it shouldn't be a problem if you haven't played XIII, which monsters are visible.

Autobattle is there because in XIII, the battle style is quick paced and real-time. It's just how XIII is and it makes it unique. Also, since its a demo...the real game will probably make you use libra or librascope like the first one to discern enemy attributes first in order to figure out a strategie.

You can't expect them to give you stronger monster earlier in the game...cause they'll kill you haha!! Part of the monster thing is so that you get to meet more variety of them and make weak ones strong as well. That's the beauty of it.

I think blood damage makes it more challenging, it's something new and interesting. You can always recover by using wound cure which you buy from the hot chocobo chick.

NPC's do that now because they talk in newer generation games instead of having a dialogue box that pops up. I don't really think it's annoying.

But hey,it's just what I think.
 
There were some parts I really liked and others just didn't seem to add anything at all. I loved the monsters and the variety on the map, but the wound damage doesn't really add anything to the game. It doesn't make battle any more fun or interesting, it's just another colour of numbers popping up in battle.

I had no idea how to open the hidden items mog found so I just ended up leaving them all. I hit all the buttons when I found them but no luck. There's probably some kind of mechanic there that I completely missed but it wasn't exactly obvious.

I saw the game was autosaving, but I played through the demo fairly quickly and didn't turn it off to test if it actually does save at certain points instead of save points. I'm all for seamless autosaving, but the game didn't seem to autosave that often which I could see being a problem =/ Are there save points in the full game?
 
There were some parts I really liked and others just didn't seem to add anything at all. I loved the monsters and the variety on the map, but the wound damage doesn't really add anything to the game. It doesn't make battle any more fun or interesting, it's just another colour of numbers popping up in battle.

I had no idea how to open the hidden items mog found so I just ended up leaving them all. I hit all the buttons when I found them but no luck. There's probably some kind of mechanic there that I completely missed but it wasn't exactly obvious.

I saw the game was autosaving, but I played through the demo fairly quickly and didn't turn it off to test if it actually does save at certain points instead of save points. I'm all for seamless autosaving, but the game didn't seem to autosave that often which I could see being a problem =/ Are there save points in the full game?

I had the same issue with the mog. Well press R1 and the mog will do it! ;)
Usually when I died it would automatically save. I havent finished the demo after I got beaten by Atlas for the 4th time. :lew:
 
I thought the battle system was worse than XIII's, for some reason it seemed even more based on autobattle. Like how you can switch leader in battle though, but don't like implimenting monsters in battle, seemed like a rip off of Enchanted Arms.

The game seems like it might be less linear, but it's hard to tell given you're only in one city, so we don't know whether you ever get to go back there after passing through, or whether it follows XIII's footsteps and whizzes you past places only never to go back to them.

Don't like Mog. I like Moogles who can't speak, who just make 'Kupo' sounds, giving Mog a voice was really bad, also it seems like a clone of Mog from IX.

I won't be buying this when it comes out. I might in the future if I hear good things, but not based on this demo.

Xx..xX
 
The game seems like it might be less linear, but it's hard to tell given you're only in one city, so we don't know whether you ever get to go back there after passing through, or whether it follows XIII's footsteps and whizzes you past places only never to go back to them.

From what I understand form the story

Spoilers up here for those that dont wanna read it

You get to go to many different locations in different parts of time, you go to the past at least im not sure if you go to the future or not, so its kinda time traveling like Chrono Trigger, and you get to go to different places, if this will be good or not I am not sure.
 
From what I understand form the story

Spoilers up here for those that dont wanna read it

You get to go to many different locations in different parts of time, you go to the past at least im not sure if you go to the future or not, so its kinda time traveling like Chrono Trigger, and you get to go to different places, if this will be good or not I am not sure.

I have played the game. You can revisit almost every single area, whether just plain revisiting, or time reversal (where you replay the story). This can be simply done by selecting the area in the grid-like map in the historia crux.

There are even story events that require you to revisit some towns/areas that you have been in. Trust me, there are some mandatory backtracking in this game.

You can't travel to the time before the ending of XIII. There's one exception, but it's due to a paradox and is not really canon.
 
I liked the demo, I thought it did pretty good at showing about everything that's in the game. (only thing it didn't show was the other two puzzles, which it couldn't anyway, and the quizzes.) Took a bit for me to get the hang of things, like the new Crystarium and all that, but I'm okay with it.

I played through the demo a third time earlier, tried to see if I could beat it without using the Crystarium or any healing items. I was able to do that. :) Though, it probably would of been a bit more of a challenge if I hadn't equipped the Rune Bracelet found in one of the treasure spheres, but eh. It was fun to do.
 
The new blood system(?):
In XIII-2 I noticed your characters can be wounded in battle, this takes points of your HP which you cannot reghain back in battle by simply curing. How you get these HP's back... I have no idea, but I hope you can because that would be really horrible if so.

I had no idea about this system until I read this topic. It was funny cause I was playing it and I was like, "what the %^&$# is going on."

*And thats why they always to read the fine print!
 
I'll be honest here - I really enjoyed it!

I mean, okay I really liked XIII as well (Despite nearly taking 2 years for me to finish it!) but everything just felt... better. I find it sort of hard to explain. It felt to me like everything XIII should have been. The monster companion idea seems rather promising. And the most annoying feature from XIII's been taken out, the 'Main character dead = Game over' thing. It works okay in Persona, in XIII it was more like the bosses being huge trolls.

Roll on February 3rd :LJ:
 
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