FINAL FANTASY XIII-2

Final Fantasy XIII-2 (ファイナルファンタジーXIII-2 Fainaru Fantajī Sātīn Tsū^?) is a console role-playing video game developed and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Released in 2011 in Japan and 2012 in North America and PAL regions, it is a direct sequel to the 2010 role-playing game, Final Fantasy XIII, and is part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis subseries. XIII-2 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. It 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, a returning character, and a young man named Noel Kreiss, journey through time in an attempt to find Lightning.
Development of Final Fantasy XIII-2 began in April 2010 and lasted 18 months. 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 mysterious and darker than the previous game. The game builds upon the Paradigm Shift battle system used in Final Fantasy XIII and includes a less linear overall design.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 received highly positive reviews from Japanese critics 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. During the first week of sales in Japan, the game sold 524,000 units, becoming the fifth-best selling game of 2011 in Japan, and sold 3 million copies worldwide by January 2013. A sequel, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, is in development and will be released in November 2013 in Japan and February 2014 in North America and Europe.

Gameplay

General navigation

The player directly controls the on-screen character through a third-person perspective to interact with people, objects, and enemies throughout the game, just as in Final Fantasy XIII. The player can also turn the camera around the characters, providing a 360° view. Final Fantasy XIII-2, which includes normal and easy modes,^[1] 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 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.
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 players 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 Final Fantasy XIII-2. 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.