Final Fantasy 13-2 Ps3

[Varinia Swicegood]

FinalFantasy XIII-2[b] is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was released in 2011 in Japan and 2012 in North America and PAL regions, and was ported to Windows in 2014. XIII-2 is a direct sequel to the 2009 role-playing game Final Fantasy XIII and part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis subseries. It includes modified features from the previous game, including fast-paced combat and a customizable "Paradigm" system to control which abilities are used by the characters, and adds a new system that allows monsters to be captured and used in battle. The game's plot features a heavy time travel element, allowing the player to jump between different times at the same location or different places at the same time. Lightning, the protagonist of the original game, has disappeared into an unknown world. Her younger sister Serah Farron and Noel Kreiss journey through time in an attempt to find her.

Development of Final Fantasy XIII-2 began in early 2010 and lasted about one and a half years. The game was unveiled at the Square Enix 1st Production Department Premier in January 2011. Many of the key designers remained in their roles from the previous game, and developer tri-Ace was hired to help with the game's design, art, and programming. The development team wanted to exceed Final Fantasy XIII in every aspect while making the story's tone more dark and mysterious than the previous game. The game builds upon the Paradigm Shift battle system used in XIII and includes a less linear overall design.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 received critical acclaim in Japan and generally positive reviews from Western video game journalists. Though praised for its gameplay, lack of linearity, and graphics, the game's story was criticized as weak and confusing. The game was the fifth-best selling game of 2011 in Japan, and sold 3.1 million copies worldwide by January 2013. A sequel, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, was released in 2013 in Japan and 2014 worldwide.

The game was added to Xbox One backward compatibility along with its predecessor and sequel in November 2018.[2][3] It is also Xbox One X Enhanced, allowing it to display in 4K Ultra HD. In November 2021, support for FPS Boost on Xbox Series X/S was added allowing it to run at 60 frames per second.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a role-playing video game sequel to Final Fantasy XIII. As in the previous game, the player controls their on-screen character through a third-person perspective to interact with people, objects, and enemies throughout the game. The player can also turn the camera around the characters, providing a 360 view. XIII-2 has a world rendered to scale relative to the characters; instead of a caricature of the character roaming around miniature terrain, as found in the earlier Final Fantasy games, every area is represented proportionally. The player navigates the world on foot or by chocobo, large flightless birds that appear regularly in the Final Fantasy series. The game world is divided into multiple regions and time periods. The player can visit a region in multiple time periods and multiple regions at the same time period. For example, the region of Oerba can be reached in the years 200 and 400 AF, while the Sunleth Waterscape and Augusta Tower regions can be visited in the year 300 AF. Some regions, because of plot points within the game, have alternate versions of themselves; for example, two versions of the Academia region in the same year can be accessed once the plot has made the second version available. Connecting all these regions is the Historia Crux, which the player can access at will. The game's regions are represented as a branching path instead of being accessed linearly. New regions can be unlocked via plot points or by acquiring optional special items and the player may transfer between unlocked regions at any point.[4]

When accessing a previously visited region, the player appears in the location of their last visit. Upon acquiring items called seals, the player can revert regions to their previous statuses to play through them again; regions can be unsealed again at any time. Unlike in the predecessor, the game is automatically saved when the player enter the Historia Crux, as well as at key moments in the plot. The player may also manually save at any time. Instead of accessing stores at save points like in XIII, the player can purchase items from a character named Chocolina, who is found throughout the game. An in-game data log provides a bestiary and incidental information about the world of XIII-2.[4] When talking to characters, the game sometimes begins the Live Trigger system, in which the player chooses their response from several options; these dialogue options are generally not repeatable. The game also occasionally features temporal rifts, in which the player must complete a puzzle to close the rift and continue the game.[4]

Combat is almost identical to the previous game's version of the series' Active Time Battle (ATB) system, called the Command Synergy Battle system. Under this system, the player selects actions from the menus, such as Attack, Abilities, or Item, and queues them up in the ATB bar. Each action requires one or more slots on the ATB bar, which begins the game with three slots and can be increased over the game to six. The ATB bar continually fills with energy over time; the player can wait for the bar to fill up for the enqueued actions to be performed, or may empty the bar early to perform whatever actions have been charged. The player may also select an autobattle command, which fills the ATB slots with actions chosen automatically. Actions the characters can perform include close-range melee attacks, ranged magical attacks, and other magical actions that evoke healing or shielding abilities. Actions cannot be performed outside of combat, and the characters' health is fully restored after each fight.[5]

Each enemy has a meter, called a Chain Gauge, consisting of a percentage that increases from a base level of 100 when the enemy is struck by attacks or spells. The amount of damage performed by an attack is multiplied by the chain percentage before it is applied to the enemy. Different attacks have different effects; some raise the chain by a larger amount while others give the player longer before the Chain Gauge resets to 100 percent. When the chain counter reaches a preset amount, different for each enemy, the enemy becomes Staggered. In this mode, the enemy has lowered defense and is easily interrupted, and some may even be launched into the air, preventing them from attacking and stopping their ATB gauges from replenishing.[5]

The Paradigm system allows the player to program six different roles, which the characters can assume to perform certain formations in battle in response to specific conditions. The roles consist of Commando, which uses non-elemental attacks to stabilize the Chain Gauge; Ravager, which uses elemental attacks to fill the Chain Gauge; Medic, a White Mage-type role which can heal the party; Saboteur, which can weaken enemies; Synergist, which can strengthen allies; and Sentinel, which has protective abilities. The two main characters can initially assume three roles, but they can learn others at the player's choosing as the game progresses. The player can select which roles the controlled character and the AI characters use while outside or during battle, which is the only way that the player can control the AI characters during a fight. The player can choose only from specific sets of paradigms that the player has set up before the battle.[5] Monsters have only one role; different ones are used when the player switches paradigms.[7] The player selects up to three monsters they wish to use in paradigms outside of battle.[5]

The Crystarium is a leveling and growth system, making a return from Final Fantasy XIII in an altered form. The system consists of constellation-style representations of the character's weapons and tamed monsters, made up of small and large crystal nodes, which can be accessed from the start of the game. There is one Crystarium system available for each monster and Paradigm role.[8] Crystogen points gained in battle can be used to expand the Crystarium, unlocking bonuses to health, magic, or strength, or provide the characters with new abilities and slots for battle accessories. For the monsters, the bonuses are unlocked with items dropped by defeated enemies.[8]

XIII-2 begins three years after the end of XIII. Owing to the collapse of Cocoon's government (the Sanctum), most of Cocoon's inhabitants have moved down to Gran Pulse, and some have learned magical abilities.[10] Over the course of the game, a scientific body called the Academy becomes a new technocratic government. While much of the story takes place in the year 3 AF, the story of XIII-2 jumps between different time periods, and even parallel versions of different places, accessed via the Historia Crux.[11] Much of the game takes place on Gran Pulse and inside Cocoon. Other locations include the Void Beyond, a limbo between time periods, and Valhalla, the capital of the goddess Etro. This place is a realm at the end of time where Etro keeps a dark energy called Chaos from escaping and destroying the timeline.[12]

As opposed to the previous game, Lightning (Ali Hillis/Maaya Sakamoto), the main character of XIII, only appears as a supporting character and the game's primary narrator. The two main playable characters are Serah Farron (Laura Bailey/Minako Kotobuki), Lightning's sister and the second narrator, and Noel Kreiss (Jason Marsden/Daisuke Kishio), a young man originally from the distant future. Other characters from the previous game who appear in important roles are Hope Estheim (Vincent Martella/Yūki Kaji), who becomes leader of the Academy, and Snow Villiers (Troy Baker/Daisuke Ono), Serah's fianc, who set off to find Lightning for Serah. The other main characters from the previous game appear in cameo roles. New characters include Caius Ballad (Liam O'Brien/Hiroshi Shirokuma), the game's primary antagonist; Paddra Nsu-Yeul (Amber Hood/Mariya Ise), a seeress possessing the all-seeing Eyes of Etro;[13] and Alyssa Zaidelle (Kim Mai Guest/Yōko Hikasa), a young girl who works as an assistant to Hope.[14]

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