Final Fantasy XIII-2 - Playstation 3

Even though I was someone who actually enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII, I freely admit it had rather large problems with its design - the level design was painfully linear, not much variety in terms of gameplay mechanics, and the post-game content was not all that interesting. But despite that, I still considered it a fun and enjoyable game.Fast forward to XIII-2, and I can say all of the problems I had with XIII have been fixed, and it's a much better game for it! As someone who lovesss exploring areas - I really enjoyed the nonlinear level design this time around. No more running down a straight path from cutscene to cutscene.As someone who is a rather large fan of time travel related stories, I thoroughly enjoyed XIII-2's story! It was all pretty interesting and held quite a few surprises - especially at the end. While yes, some might not care for the ending, I thought it was rather bold, and I cannot wait to see what happens next. Serah and Noel were fantastic characters, and Noel became one of my favorite Final Fantasy male leads in all the series - he's like a mixture of Zidane and Sora almost. Serah develops pretty well herself over the course of the game, and Caius is now one of my favorite villains in any video game. I absolutely loved his motivations.The battle system - one of XIII's best qualities - remains mostly the same with only a few tweaks here and there. No more 3 second waits for paradigm shifts, ability to tame and recruit monsters (which is a lot more addicting than I initially suspected), strategic use of feral links, and the cinematic actions were interesting (and thankfully were not overused). I especially loved the final cinematic action in the game - it was an epic moment with perfect music.The music is... well, it was mostly fine. I enjoyed many of the tracks (and they also reused some of the older XIII music in perfect spots) with only a few that I didn't care for. Thankfully the ones I didn't like are not a large part of the game.The graphics are gorgeous as always for a Final Fantasy game, but not perfect. While the environments and characters look stunning, there is a little bit of slowdown in some areas - particularly one of the cities later in the game. It's not game-breaking or anything like that, but you can easily tell when the frames dip a little bit.If you race through the game without doing any optional stuff, it'll probably take you between 25-30 hours to complete. If you're like me and love doing everything, all sidequests, all fragments, leveling up to max, and becoming addicted to finding and infusing new monsters, it'll last you a lot longer. I finished off everything I wanted to do (got the Platinum) in 92 hours.So if you didn't like Final Fantasy XIII due to the level design and lack of variety, I can safely recommend XIII-2 to you. :)

I basically just want to say that I love this game. The combat, story, characters and monster system is amazing. A lot of people do not like the story and the ending but I honestly thought the game from beginning to end was great. Sure, the very, very end was disappointing because I didn't think Square would go that route, but I'm fine with it. Why? Because I got the secret ending after a ton of hours put into this game just to get to it. I cared so much about the story and characters that I decided to basically go for the Platinum Trophy just so I can see what actually happened. And now that I know, i'm satisfied in almost every way possible from this game. I even decided to read all the fragments to get a better sense of the story and learn all the little details about Mog and other stuff the game provided. The story is very easy to follow and I completely support that approach. Long story short, the game completely exceeded my expectations in every single way possible. I only have a few nitpicks but those are completely subjective. Just like every other review in the world, reviews are opinions. Not facts.Pros would be: Combat, monster system, story, great villain, epic final fight, characters, environments and the freedom you have in this game compared to FF13.Cons would be: The music can be inconsistent. Some of the tracks are sub par while some tracks are fantastic. I like a good amount of the songs in the game to be honest, but some of them are rather...questionable. Another con is just a little nitpick. The Mog design. I wish the art design of mog was better because I <3 Mog. He's awesome. But the design of Mog in this game is a bit disappointing.Those are really the only problems I have with the game. If your a big Final Fantasy fan or just a fan of RPG's in general then I would definitely recommend this game to you. I've already recommended this game to a few of my friends who like RPG games and, surprisingly, they're enjoying it as well. Thank you Square for a fantastic game...:)