Final Fantasy XIII-2 is so underrated and unfairly forgotten

[Dlanor A. Knox]

Academia GOAT

Replaying this on PC confirmed my feelings, its one of my favorite final fantasy games, for sure.

I also love Lightning Returns and think it's even more underrated (how's that game at like 66 on metacritic?? I enjoyed it way more than 13.)

 

[Blablurn]

Justice for Lightning

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Weren't there rumors that this game actually recycled Kitase's concept for a Chrono Trigger 2?

 

[Hzsn724]

By far the weakest entry imo. Time travel, dozens of Yuel's, not enough Lightning, boring and repetitive gameplay, it's mind numbingly easy, the ending........ The monster catching, hunting, and growth systems weren't even any fun. I platinumed the whole trilogy and this one was by far the most tedious and time consuming.

 

[timshundo]

I know it's fun to rate entries in a trilogy best to worst but these 3 games are so distinctly their own that I love them all equally. Each has its main pro and con and I just accept them and appreciate that we got two sequels in the first place.

XIII
- gorgeous, streamlined experience
- a slog in the first half, background lore scattered and hard to grasp

XIII-2
- solid improvements built upon XIII's backbone, anime turned to 9000, unique story, MUSIC
- low budget is apparent

LR
- Amazing hybrid battle system, "open world" not a slog, fun ending
- EXTREMELY low budget glaring, horrible quests

I see each of them as like an 80% on the RT meter. Not super high but still my favorites of the FF's. FFVII Remake is on the same level, maybe like an 85%.

 

[werezompire]

Anyone here tried it on PC with a harder difficulty mod? I remember the game being too easy was one of the biggest problems the original release had.

 

[squall211]

I agree with OP. I loved this game, and it's soundtrack is so criminally underrated.

 

[MrBS]

I absolutely adore this game. Not underrated. It got reasonable reviews and feedback at the time and that's just fine with me. And as with any XIII-2 thread got to say, love that ending so so sooooo much.

 

[filterfilter]

I absolutely loved XIII, but I just couldn't get into XIII-2 at all.

The praise for this and negativity for XIII has never made sense to me. I do want to give it another shot in the future, though.

 

[pahlke1]

Honestly Caius is in my top 5 FF Villains. Perfect handling in my eyes.

 

[Makoto Yuki]

By far the weakest entry imo. Time travel, dozens of Yuel's, not enough Lightning, boring and repetitive gameplay, it's mind numbingly easy, the ending........ The monster catching, hunting, and growth systems weren't even any fun. I platinumed the whole trilogy and this one was by far the most tedious and time consuming.

Click to shrink...

Lol talk about avatar quoting. I found it WAYYY less repetitive and boring compared to the first game.

 

[CanUKlehead]

If I hated XIII's story and characters and world, along with the corridors, but OK with the battle system, is there any reason for me to bother with the second and third?

 

[Voytek]

It was definitely the best game in the trilogy to me. Although that's not really saying much.

 

[ClearMetal]

Beginning XIII-2 was amazing. When you recruit your first monster in one of the first battles (if not THE first?) and the entire battle system opens up immediately, instead of having to play a 20 hour tutorial like XIII. It was such a good battle system as well. One of the few JRPGs where I had no trouble grinding out battles whatsoever. Even that "100 pre-emptive strikes in a row" achievement was easy.

Also there was always something so cool about capturing all these monsters, including behemoths, and having them battle alongside you.

Godlike OST as well.




TIIIIIIME IS FLYING BYYYYYYYY

 

[werezompire]

If I hated XIII's story and characters and world, along with the corridors, but OK with the battle system, is there any reason for me to bother with the second and third?

Click to shrink...

FF13-2's combat system is basically the same as FF13, except it unlocks things a lot faster (you have basically the whole system available to you plus a 3 person party within an hour or two whereas at that point in FF13, you haven't even unlocked leveling up) & there are only 2 human characters with the 3rd slot being taken up by various monsters you can capture/summon. There's also some added QoL like the paradigm shifting is faster. Downside is that the difficulty is lower than FF13 although there are mods for this on the PC version (haven't tried them).

Haven't played FF13-3 beyond the demo, but it uses an entirely different battle system.

 

[FallenGrace]

Well the story is stupid.

Click to shrink...

This.

I enjoyed the exploration and combat mechanics but the story was nonsense just like XIII and I never played Lightning Returns.

 

[Man Called Aerodynamics]

This was my least favorite of the trilogy and I 100%'ed all three. I've been meaning to revisit it on Xbox One X and check out the enhancements though.

 

[Gunny T Highway]

Caius has one of the most legit reasons to do what he does and that is what makes him such a great villain in my eyes.

Academia GOAT

Replaying this on PC confirmed my feelings, its one of my favorite final fantasy games, for sure.

I also love Lightning Returns and think it's even more underrated (how's that game at like 66 on metacritic?? I enjoyed it way more than 13.)

Click to shrink...

I agree Academia is one of the most beautiful cities Square has made in a long time.

 

[CanUKlehead]

FF13-2's combat system is basically the same as FF13, except it unlocks things a lot faster (you have basically the whole system available to you plus a 3 person party within an hour or two whereas at that point in FF13, you haven't even unlocked leveling up) & there are only 2 human characters with the 3rd slot being taken up by various monsters you can capture/summon. There's also some added QoL like the paradigm shifting is faster. Downside is that the difficulty is lower than FF13 although there are mods for this on the PC version (haven't tried them).

Haven't played FF13-3 beyond the demo, but it uses an entirely different battle system.

Click to shrink...

Cool, thanks.

 

[Zephy]

Square Enix managed to make a game with HD town areas

Click to shrink...

Kind of. The futuristic city you posted, for example, (forgot the name, sorry) was really cool in terms of visual design, the kind of cities I'd like to see more of, but it definitely didn't feel like a city. It was just a dungeon where they added some useless NPCs walking around after you cleared it. There was nothing to see there, nothing to do, no interaction whatsoever, it 100% felt like a prop, a carboard cutout of a city. It's just meaningless corridors, it doesn't feel like any of the buildings you walk by have a purpose or an existence beyond their facade. I was quite disappointed by this part of the game considering how much I love that type of setting. I hoped it would have been an actual hub, like the Citadel, Omega or Ilium in Mass Effect. Whenever I see those amazing screenshots, I feel kind of cheated.

 

[lusca_bueno]

It's a really fun game. Definitely the strongest out of that trilogy by far.

I love the ending.

Click to shrink...

Yes, love the ending of XIII-2 as well.

While I still prefer XIII-1 Lightning separated from all the bullshit that swallowed her design and writting later, XIII-2 is still a great game.

 

[MrT-Tar]

I've always really enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII-2 and I'm glad people seem to have warmed to it in recent years.

I was about to post how it came out roughly the same time as The Last Story and how I often compare the two in my mind, but I remembered that posted this in a similar thread last month:

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is not only "one of the better" numbered Final Fantasy titles in my opinion, but is also one of my favourite JRPGs of the last decade. I'm glad this is a much more common view than it seemed back in 2012.

Both Final Fantasy XIII-2 and The Last Story released in February 2012 (at least here in the UK) and I bought both on release. Beforehand I was far more hyped for The Last Story, due to it being directed by Sakaguchi and having been underwhelmed by Final Fantasy XIII, but I remember surprising myself and in the end slightly preferring Final Fantasy XIII-2 - despite loving both.

Click to shrink...

 

[Igor]

Can't wait for a remaster so that hot takes like this will no longer be a thing.

The game was ok. Gameplay was somewhat an improvement over 13, the music was cute but the story was a nonsensical gibberish and a lot of level design was still fairly linear, just a little better at masking it. I really don't even think people have forgotten about it, either.

 

[Thrill_house]

Oh god no. I trudged through it and it just felt like a huge mess. I'll never forget cracking up laughing at that dumb shit "Change the future and you change the past" line. Lighting's sister was an annoying idiot and I couldn't stand noel. The soundtrack was alright though.

 

[Zafir]

It's honestly my least favourite game of the XIII trilogy. I really didn't like the world structure at all. A lot of areas were kind of re-used from XIII which was pretty dull, and honestly not too much of an improvement on the linearity stand point. Plus each area then was often re-used again inside the game since you go there at different points in time. To add insult to injury it wasn't exactly very open either, so you couldn't just skip the worlds which were boring, you had to often go through a world to unlock another world and then eventually you'll unlock the world you actually wanted. I preferred XIII's linearity to it honestly, XIII-2's just felt incredibly tedious. I'm glad LR just went with a more traditional open world with 4 "hubs", while I have a lot of complaints over LR, the world ain't actually one.

The story was mostly a load of rubbish since it was added onto a retconned ending of XIII. Noel and his friends had a decent story in isolation, but it was completely marred by all the time travelling, and also the general plot of XIII rearing it's ugly head.

I can't say I enjoyed the monster capturing either really.

I dunno I did really want to like it, but I just couldn't. By the end it felt like I was forcing myself through it just so I could get to LR and give it a try without feeling lost story wise. Considering the story in LR is pretty bad and nonsensical too, I really probably didn't need to. At least I did enjoy LR as a game more though...

 

[Nintenleo]

Best single player Final Fantasy since X. The story is completely crazy and KH level, but it was so fun to play. Gameplay-wise is among the best titles in the franchise.

 

[Wireframe]

XIII-2 is probably the best in the trilogy. I really enjoyed Lightning returns too. I don't think XIII could live up to the hype from that initial trailer in 2006.

 

[Patazord]

FFX13-2>FFX13>>>>>>>Lightning returns

FF13-2 is the one i enjoy the most, crazy story with memorable characters , fun gameplay, freaking pokemon, ton of side stuff to do, it's so good !
FF13 got a lot a strong moment but it's so painfull to replay.
LR is just weird and bad, the only thing i really liked about this game is the freaking batshit crazy ending, you can tell the writer didn't care anymore, they just wanted to end the shitshow.

 

[Snozz]

Honestly one of the strangest games I've played, but definitely some lovable parts- I especially enjoyed Caius, the soundtrack and the improvements to the battle system. Sad it never continued to evolve because xiii-2 like x-2 felt like they were close to a modern age ATB that felt great to play.

I do feel like we lost out on a real XIII Part 2 that could've retroactively saved XIII by filling in the plot holes (answering FNC questions, giving clearer motives to Falcie that don't require reading logs etc), but XIII-2 went the complete opposite way and introduced far more ridiculous questions than we had when we started. It was decent for what is was.

 

[Hzsn724]

Lol talk about avatar quoting. I found it WAYYY less repetitive and boring compared to the first game.

Click to shrink...

My avatar is from Lighting Returns which is the best game in the trilogy imo... it's Majora's Mask meets Valkyrie Profile in the FFXIII engine.

Anyway, the endgame and overall combat of FFXIII is way more involved than anything in XIII-2. The 5 star hunts, the extra missions all dug deep into the battle system. FFXIII-2 had no endgame beyond getting all 140 fragments which was literally just find them on the map, make a different decision in a conversation, or fail a timeline. You could easily walk through FFXIII-2 with little to no challenge. Both XIII and Lighting Returns had several new concepts throughout that changed the way you played.

 

[Makoto Yuki]

My avatar is from Lighting Returns which is the best game in the trilogy imo... it's Majora's Mask meets Valkyrie Profile in the FFXIII engine.

Anyway, the endgame and overall combat of FFXIII is way more involved than anything in XIII-2. The 5 star hunts, the extra missions all dug deep into the battle system. FFXIII-2 had no endgame beyond getting all 140 fragments which was literally just find them on the map, make a different decision in a conversation, or fail a timeline. You could easily walk through FFXIII-2 with little to no challenge. Both XIII and Lighting Returns had several new concepts throughout.

Click to shrink...

I know it's from Lightning Returns, but It's fun dressing up Lightning.

That is the one downside to FFXIII-2, too easy. The endgame was DLC battles.

I've platinumed all 3 games as well. XIII-2 was the most fun to play and platinum, FXIII was a slog but got better with the hunts. At least Lightning Returns was an easy and pretty quick platinum. I enjoyed exploring it's world more than FFXIII. Gran Pulse was pretty much the only redeeming part of XIII in my opinon.

 

[Hzsn724]

I know it's from Lightning Returns, but It's fun dressing up Lightning.

That is the one downside to FFXIII-2, too easy. The endgame was DLC battles.

I've platinumed all 3 games as well. XIII-2 was the most fun to play and platinum, FXIII was a slog but got better with the hunts. At least Lightning Returns was an easy and pretty quick platinum. I enjoyed exploring it's world more than FFXIII. Gran Pulse was pretty much the only redeeming part of XIII in my opinon.

Click to shrink...

Lighting is queen lol. I also liked X-2 alot and the dress schemata was ripped straight from the Gullwings which was a cool nod. For me, Lighting Returns was the most fun as it was a mostly open world game that let you play it in any order you wanted. While not as difficult as XIII, Lighting Returns had a nice mix of gameplay which basically turned into FFVIIR without the Valkrie Profile insipired combat. XIII-2 did make you pay for the extra content which a lot of ppl skipped out on, including the real ending. Time travel, the fragment slog, and the repetitive monster bashing to find certain fragments was just really boring for me. Not saying the game didn't have charm or anything, it's like it tried to be bigger than XIII by adding in more maps, that were all linear throughout time, and monster catching, but to me it just felt like a face lift and not a new experience.

 

[Deleted member 679]

I don't like it that much, I think it was too much of a downgrade from XIII in gameplay, but I'm willing to give it another shot before I play Lightning Returns for the first time. Hopefully the PC version is better than XIII, though.

 

[Makoto Yuki]

Lighting is queen lol. I also liked X-2 alot and the dress schemata was ripped straight from the Gullwings which was a cool nod. For me, Lighting Returns was the most fun as it was a mostly open world game that let you play it in any order you wanted. While not as difficult as XIII, Lighting Returns had a nice mix of gameplay which basically turned into FFVIIR without the Valkrie Profile insipired combat. XIII-2 did make you pay for the extra content which a lot of ppl skipped out on, including the real ending. Time travel, the fragment slog, and the repetitive monster bashing to find certain fragments was just really boring for me. Not saying the game didn't have charm or anything, it's like it tried to be bigger than XIII by adding in more maps, that were all linear throughout time, and monster catching, but to me it just felt like a face lift and not a new experience.

Click to shrink...

Someone said it best in a previous post. You can tell the budget of both FFXIII-2 and LR were greatly reduced after XIII. Which is a shame because if both games had the time and budget of XIII they would both probably be better experiences overall.

 

[Lukar]

I'm in the middle of replaying FF13 on PC at the moment, and I'm still enjoying it like I did back in the day (always thought it was a decent game, despite its flaws), but I'm really just looking forward to finishing it so I can move on to replaying 13-2. I loved it back when it came out, and consider it one of my favorites in the series. It has a lot of zaniness to it, but I can't help but love it. The ending hit me really hard. The game really sold you on characters like Serah, Noel, and Caius.

And yeah, as I remember it, the gameplay was a lot more engaging than in 13. If 13's gameplay structure had been more like 13-2, I think a lot of people would have enjoyed it more.

 

[Hzsn724]

Someone said it best in a previous post. You can tell the budget of both FFXIII-2 and LR were greatly reduced after XIII. Which is a shame because if both games had the time and budget of XIII they would both probably be better experiences overall.

Click to shrink...

In a perfect world I guess. They aren't bad games by any means, but XIII-2 does feel a bit like they cut corners to me after the negative user reviews of XIII by means of copy and pasting a lot of the original game's content/enemies/locations.... LR feels fresher with new combat, new character designs, layouts, locations, side quests, and mission based gameplay with a Majora's Mask esque time clock. To me, it's a mix of some of my favorite games with FFXIV like quests. The game at the time did feel like an offline mmo to me (if that makes any sense). In saying that, the missions, quests, and characters do feel at times like they could have been further explored or more detailed about the dying world they live in. Like the sand world was pretty baron and a ton of endgame dungeon stuff is there. Or the missions are find this enemy that stole the chocobo greens... It's a weird game for sure, but I love it.

 

[Makoto Yuki]

In a perfect world I guess. They aren't bad games by any means, but XIII-2 does feel a bit like they cut corners to me after the negative user reviews of XIII by means of copy and pasting a lot of the original game's content/enemies/locations.... LR feels fresher with new combat, new character designs, layouts, locations, side quests, and mission based gameplay with a Majora's Mask esque time clock. To me, it's a mix of some of my favorite games with FFXIV like quests. The game at the time did feel like an offline mmo to me (if that makes any sense). In saying that, the missions, quests, and characters do feel at times like they could have been further explored or more detailed about the dying world they live in. Like the sand world was pretty baron and a ton of endgame dungeon stuff is there. Or the missions are find this enemy that stole the chocobo greens... It's a weird game for sure, but I love it.

Click to shrink...

FFXIII-2 definitely feels like a reaction and over correction from all the negative feedback from FFXIII. LR just feels like they wanted to wrap up the Lightning and friends story.

 

[Belladonna]

I think every 13 game has improved on itself. I think XII-2 was the most balanced out of them but Lighting Returns had the best battle system. XIII-2 had some god tier music.

 

[touchfuzzy]

I'd play it again if they re-released, have to think they've got something brewing. Surprised we never saw a "trilogy" pack release on the PS4/One gen.

 

[pleaseinsertdisctwo]

I thought I would've loved Lightning Returns because I love the atmosphere and how it reminds me so much of Majora's Mask in a way (and Valkyrie Profile)

But it's severely dragged down by:

1. Zero effort put into the writing. Zero. Like it cannot be stressed how atrocious the writing in this game is. If you ask me the only cutscenes in the game are the opening and ending, and only because they're insanely gorgeous.

2. Stat upgrades are tied to quests and equipment. Why???

3. I don't know why they decided to make Lightning the only playable character.

4. I'm not a fan of how staggering works in this game. Every enemy has weird and oddly specific conditions to be staggered. It's tedious.

It's a fun enough game on Easy mode, but with lots of questionable design decisions. The game reminds me of Sonic and the Secret Rings in the sense that established characters with established personalities were randomly assigned to fulfill a certain role, except in this case it's not cute and it's just laziness

 

[The Bear]

I hope XIII-2 gets remastered at some point (I guess in a XIII trilogy box). It's a pretty decent game, although it is dragged down by some aspects (outright abysmal writing even compared to first FF13, kinda bad performance, too easy difficulty and uneven soundtrack). The game had lot of potential.

 

[Jimmypython]

Agreed, FF13-2 is the best among the three. 13-3 suffered from the extremely limited budget.

 

[manzoman96]

I remember really enjoying the game. Played it back in high school and remember completing a big chunk when we were stuck home due to hurricane sandy.

 

[FinFunnels]

I thought I would've loved Lightning Returns because I love the atmosphere and how it reminds me so much of Majora's Mask in a way (and Valkyrie Profile)

But it's severely dragged down by:

1. Zero effort put into the writing. Zero. Like it cannot be stressed how atrocious the writing in this game is. If you ask me the only cutscenes in the game are the opening and ending, and only because they're insanely gorgeous.

2. Stat upgrades are tied to quests and equipment. Why???

3. I don't know why they decided to make Lightning the only playable character.

4. I'm not a fan of how staggering works in this game. Every enemy has weird and oddly specific conditions to be staggered. It's tedious.

It's a fun enough game on Easy mode, but with lots of questionable design decisions. The game reminds me of Sonic and the Secret Rings in the sense that established characters with established personalities were randomly assigned to fulfill a certain role, except in this case it's not cute and it's just laziness

Click to shrink...

I agree with all of your other points, but I recently finished the game and got 100% of the achievements and I barely paid attention to the stagger requirements. You can stagger the enemies quicker by following the requirements, but most enemies can still easily be staggered just by chaining your attacks and hitting them with their elemental weaknesses. The trick is to keep your chain going by alternating attacks and not using combo finishers.

 

[PAFenix]

Another FFXIII-2 appreciation thread?

No, not a complaint, I'm so happy that people are finally waking up to this game lol Definitely the best of the 13 trilogy for me, even if the story started becoming nonsense. It hadn't gone off the deep end like Lightning Returns, still not as good a story like it's predecessor, but it was so much more fun to play.

Glad you're enjoying it, OP!

 

[TaleSpun]

The music is excellent and the cast is charming. It didn't really hold me, but it's a very sweet game tonally and I appreciate that even more now than I did then. I've wanted to revisit it a little for a while now. Does anyone know if it's good on PC?

 

[Deleted member 23475]

Yes the game was really awesome for the budget/development time they had. Music, Academia, the ending. It was a great underrated game.

 

[pleaseinsertdisctwo]

I agree with all of your other points, but I recently finished the game and got 100% of the achievements and I barely paid attention to the stagger requirements. You can stagger the enemies quicker by following the requirements, but most enemies can still easily be staggered just by chaining your attacks and hitting them with their elemental weaknesses. The trick is to keep your chain going by alternating attacks and not using combo finishers.

Click to shrink...

How DARE u correctly point out that I was playing wrong

 

[Skulldead]

the lack of challenge really put me off, this is was probably my favorite thing of FFXIII i thought with add difficulty setting that would still be the case, but nop...

 

[Jubern]

In retrospect I'm not sure how good the game actually was but it is by far my favourite in the XIII trilogy.

XIII was just a big pile of whatever. It wasn't agressively bad or anything, it had high production values and some great art. But its flaws are crippling as described by a lot of people here already.

XIII-2 is a game I never thought I'd play but I downloaded the demo and somehow found it enthralling. Next thing I know I bought it and cleared it in just a few days...
I really didn't care for the Pokémon stuff, the story wasn't very strong and you could just feel the lower production values looking at the framerate and general IQ. But everything else really got to me - the numerous locations to explore, a love-able main character group, even better art direction and a much more memorable soundtrack overall (RIP Origa...).
If I had to summerize, I'd say it's a game that really understood what was good about FFXIII as a video game and tried to course-correct as well as it could on its limited time and budget.

I bought Lightning Returns day 1 two years later and while I did enjoy it to a degree, I didn't like it as much...

I'm not even saying XIII-2 is the best game of the trilogy, it simply was the most enjoyable IMO.

FFXIII-2 >>> FFXIII > LR.