Final Fantasy XIII-2

In some ways, we love Final Fantasy XIII-2. For instance, it looks gorgeous. After trundling through myriad shades of grey and brown for the past few months, FF XIII-2 is like an enormous bag of skittles ejaculating a technicolour load into your jaded, bloodshot eyes. It’s beautiful, vibrant and the art team gave 110 percent into making your surroundings as aesthetically dazzling as possible. Of course this is Final Fantasy, so you won’t be able to do anything but look at it while running around the same paths, but it’s nice to know the art people are really happy and like drawing things that are nice, colourful and bright. We’ve missed seeing these sorts of colours in videogames recently.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 sounds lovely too. You’ll be cantering around all these happy wild looking places and some utterly rad j-pop or a dreamy ballad will be blasting away and it’ll be like 1997 all over again. We’re not too ashamed to say that some of the music here almost made us tear up. It’s beautiful man ‘sniff’! There’s even a death/thrash metal arrangement of the Chocobo theme, if that’s your bag.

We also kind of like how non gritty and cutesy it is too. After grim, depressing stuff like Witcher 2 and Dark Souls, to have an RPG with characters like a tiny bobble headed character with a kids voice that says ‘kupo kupo!’ all the time is really sweet and endearing. Main characters Serah and Noel are so ditzy and innocent, they probably think ploughing is something to do with farting about on clouds. Although in some weird metaphysical way maybe it is. Hmmm…

But here’s the thing. For all its pretty colours and oh so Japanese presentation, Final Fantasy XIII-2 feels like a mess, a hulking indecipherable sugar coated clusterfuck. The plot is pretty poor for a start. It involves the crabby-arsed protagonist of Final Fantasy XIII (who if you remember was called Lightning, they’re never ever called Maureen or anything) being inexplicably whisked away to some alternate dimension. It’s up to dippy younger sister Serah (the Rodney to Lightning’s Del Boy) to step up and fall through the bar as it were. She’s joined by a lad from the future called Noel Edmonds (not really), and promptly decides to try and find her sister by travelling through time and fixing a bunch of anomalies by finding relics or something. Yeah we know, we zoned out too.

The plot isn’t helped by the dialogue and voice acting. Anyone above the age of 20 that’s played a Final Fantasy since Final Fantasy X will know where this is going. In FF games past it was a lot more engrossing to read the speech bubbles, and laugh as Cid Highwind got really f*&%7ng angry. It added to the charm. Since we’re now being assaulted aurally by the twee little fuckers though, it’s a mite… well, embarrassing. Granted there’s nothing quite as bad in XIII-2 as the moment in X when Tidus has a seizure and starts laughing like a serial killer, but still, you wouldn’t want to be caught playing this.

The thing is, Final Fantasy XIII-2 is still enjoyable despite the plot (arguably the most important part of an RPG) being indecipherable, convoluted twaddle. Even if you couldn’t give a toss about what Noel and Serah are up to, it’s quite fun loafing around different time zones and fighting numerous beasties. Final Fantasy XIII’s combat system makes a return here, and it’s been refined. You can capture the monsters you fight too and level the little blighters up, a wee bit like an even more melodramatic variation of Pokemon. Once you get the hang of your paradigm shifts and level up your fighting force, it becomes quite fun watching your characters wailing on a bunch of monsters, like a crew of drunk, sociopath deviantart drawings come to life. It’s a step in the right direction after the corridor twee-em-up that was Final Fantasy XIII, but god, the series really is in need of a shake up now. Doubtless it’ll sell millions, and Manga hair gel product sales will skyrocket, but the whole thing feels so… uninvolving. It’s like you’re merely a spectator to the world’s prettiest, but most boring anime. And we’re too manly for anime. For real…

Kawaii! ^-^