Sorry alles in English, will das aber nicht alles nochmal uebersetzen.
So I got my platinum today and I thought I should write about the game once again since my earlier impressions weren't all that kind to the game, not sure if my feelings towards the game have changed all that much.
Story part (without doing too much side quest stuff)
Can't say I had too much fun here, except the final boss the game is just so easy that it hurts (on normal difficulty which is sadly the highest in the game), even quite a few of the bosses are just fodder. Therefor its no wonder that you will need only three roles (atk,bla,hlr) and like 3 paradigms (atk-atk-atk,atk-bla-bla,atk-bla-hlr) to finish almost everything in the story part. Staggering seems kind of harder so I played probably 50% with triple attacker since this was the fastest way to get rid of the mobs. Due to the low difficulty the fighting system cannot really shine and it felt really boring and downgraded to me most of the time (which was the worst for me since I mostly played this for the fighting system). Combined with a meh story and an even more meh ending this was really extremely disappointing experience.
Post game
I enjoyed this a little more than the story part, even though the offered content isn't all that great. For the optional bosses and some stronger enemies you will finally need def/jam roles, syn is kind of useless for the whole game. Still, its sad that most optional bosses are recycled from the last game and their difficulty isn't all that great either. Then you obviously have to find the 100+ fragments you might be missing. Lots of those are just item fetch quest, some however involve the annoying casino or rather stupid puzzle mini games.
General game things
1. Roles/Skills
As pointed out, some roles are only needed for post game. Even worse is SYN for me. At least Noel/Serah cannot learn any useful skills in that role, skills like Elemental Weapons/Armors as well as Bravery are Monster exclusive and I kind of feel mad that they gimped this role so much. There is no more castable Haste in the game either and the ultimate attacks can only be performed once a fight due to balancing.
2. Weapons/Accessories
Honestly, I feel they are so pointless for the story as well as post game time. As said, the game is easy and putting a lot of time into getting some weapons seems pointless to me, especially since the ultimate weapon(s) in this game are not one the ones a player can hold but your monsters … but more on that later. Accessories now have a weight limit so you will need to put more work into finding the right combination, not that the game ever really requires you to even use them at all (maybe once or twice to have better resistance against negative status effects).
3. Monsters
I don't really like monsters and wish we had more real characters, but I admit that the best part of the game are the monsters. I still wish the the system itself was more complex but there is a fair share of cool monsters and the ability to put on accessories is kind of neat too (at least my gf liked some of the very funny combinations you can do). Overall I think the monsters with the right training will be better than any of your characters in any role. For instance my ATK monster could be pretty much called ultimate weapon. He stomps Noel and makes him look like a character without any leveling, its just not funny anymore. I am sure its possible to make a ultimate SYN that is better than any of the main character too.
4. Mog clock
Kind of a step backward, kind of a step forward. Compared to 13 its totally annoying that you cant see who you will fight, also finding rare monsters ends up into ages of running around, hoping for that one important encounter you need. Some areas also have incredible high encounter rates so that there is a new encounter like every 5-10 steps which is rather annoying.
On the other hand the fights are super short now, if you hit the enemy within the time limit you will have auto haste and most normal encounters will end before haste even runs out. This is obviously rather practical if you need to farm items or gil, the days of long and hard fights against normal mobs are certainly gone (compared to 13).
5. Environments
Lots of recycling here, at least a couple of new environments made it into the game, my favorites are clearly Neo Bodhum AF700 and Academia. The rest is mostly a mix new environments with designs that existed in 13 already. The Casino looks cool but the mini games are totally lack luster and downright horrible. I really wish there had been more completely new designed environments. It also doesn't help that most of the areas in different times are just reskins, they don't actually change their layout all that much (or rather if at all). Also areas are a little more open now and sometimes allow alternative parts, but its really not all that different to 13, at least they can claim they worked on it now ...
6. Recycling
There is fair share of new stuff, much more than X-2 had. However the recycling is still very bad, there are like 5 new normal enemies and all the others are old ones with color swaps. Most of the bosses are new but even most of the optional bosses are recycled from the last game. I really wish there had been more real new content.
7. Optional endings
There are 9 but only 2 are worth it. One is the Flan ending which is rather funny, the other one is actually pretty cool because you can change time so that really bad things don't happen to begin with. However I feel like there is lots of lost potential here. Instead of just a short ending I wish they would rather have made separate playable story paths of what could happened after you changed some important decisions.
8. Story
The title for this game is just wrong, a better title would have been 13 Reloaded … combined with the fact that once again you might not really grasp a good portion of the story if you don't read the data log entries. When you see the ending you will probably be left with tons of questions and it certainly doesn't help that the game ends with "to be continued …". Because the question is when will be continued? Will we wait another 2 years for Final Fantasy 13 Revelations (which might not happen due to console life span and bad sales?), will we need to buy their dlc to get some answers or do we just need to buy the next novel and wait that someone translates it for us …?
9. DLC
I don't get why anyone would want to spend a cent on dlc for this game. The weapons are totally not needed because equipment is pointless in this game anyway. Costumes like the AC one are probably really cool but unless ALL of them are available on release date I don't see why anyone would go back to get some customs for a game he beat ages ago. The arena is boring too, Omega should have been in the game from the start and he isn't really a monster you need, just save the money and watch his fight once on youtube. Leaves us with the story dlc which apparently includes Sazh. Judging by the game, I doubt his story will be all that interesting, you're probably better of with youtube again.
10. OST
Overall it has some really good tracks, however until now I never had a FF game that had music that made me mute the music. Well that is over now, some of the vocal tracks are so horrible, it really freaked me out, I really hope that his massive vocal trend wont continue in other FF entries. However there are also some vocal tracks that are pretty cool and really fit the mood when they appear in the game.
Concusion
Overall this feels like FF13 redux for me, I always felt like 13 had tons of good ideas but they just threw away all of the potential they had. The same can be said about this game, it could have been so much better, however one of the big factors in this is probably the super short dev time, I am still kind of amazed that they got all this together in about 18 months. Like I said in my last post, 13 felt to me like everything was intended the way they wanted it, while in in 13-2 it feels like they just threw some shit together to make some quick extra bucks. Overall its a not a total shit game but its also far from super awesome game. If I had to rate it I would probably place it under 13 for me, I just enjoyed it overall far more than this game.
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