of a direct continuation of an FF title was looked upon simultaneously as long overdue

and an unacceptable blasphemy. But that was then. Since then, we’ve had an After Years,

a Revenant Wings, and all the crap that VII exploded into. So Final Fantasy XIII-2 shouldn’t

really be all that remarkable, should it? After all, it’s a continuation of the most

reviled and divisive entry in the series since... well, depending on who you ask, all of them.

The power to defy this backslide comes courtesy of a small word with a lot of potential.

Retcon. Retroactive continuity. He who controls the present controls the past, and he who

wrote the script controls everything. XIII struck many as a Final Fantasy devoid of...

well, for lack of a better term, Final Fantasy-ness. There were chocobos (countless hours deep

in the game), there were mobs with familiar names (even if they were rarely in a recognizable

form), there were crystals freakin’ everywhere, but it didn’t seem at all congruous to its

namesake. XIII-2 sets out to change that by its own example; this is XIII, remade as an

ACTUAL Final Fantasy. And it’s so much the better for it.

Serah, sister of XIII’s protagonist Lightning, has had a nagging feeling for the three years

since the events of the previous game: Something’s just not right. There’s an incongruity between

what she (and anyone who actually finished XIII) remembers, and what seems to be the

situation she’s currently experiencing. Turns out, that cataclysmic showdown blasted

a hole in the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff holding the world together, creating localized

paradoxes where anything can happen and usually does, and also huge freaking monsters. Fortunately,

you’re joined by Noel, who’s been charged by Lightning herself with delivering Sarah

to Valhalla. (‘Cuz she uses Odin. Get it?)

To do so... well, fire up your flux capacitor and put on some Huey Lewis, ‘cuz we’re

going back in time. The only way to get to Valhalla is to bounce through spacetime, solving

paradoxes and generally ironing out the wrinkles in time on their way to yet another climactic

showdown. Along the way, you run into plenty of familiar faces, a Casino at the End of

Time (take that, Douglas Adams), a massive number of sidequests, and the same young girl,

over and over and over again. I don’t know if it’s just because I’ve replayed Final

Fantasy VIII so recently, but these mechanics - and the motivations behind them - just feel

reasonable.

This is a game that seeks to correct the mistakes of its predecessor, and I feel it does an

admirable job. Your primary antagonist is not only sympathetic but believable. Your

protagonists are generally optimistic and likable, and when doubt or anger sets in,

they themselves understand the situation enough to call themselves out on it. The world shatters

the notion of the corridor-based hyper-linear FFXIIII style by making maps wider and making

the entire game more sandboxy. You can get to the endgame with only about a quarter of

the game’s 160 fragments, meaning there’s plenty of breadth to the game... even before

DLC gets involved. But that’s another matter entirely.

Mechanically, the experience is much like XIII in that the traditional Final Fantasy

“jobs” are replaced by “roles” organized into “paradigms.” There being only two

party members, though, means that the third position in each fight is filled by a monster

you’ve subjugated, and developed through a unique crystarium system using bits and

pieces dropped from other monsters. Or you can just make the monsters eat each other.

That works too. Each one has its own role just like your characters. Also, you may have

seen what look like quicktime events in certain cutscenes; these are actually rebranded as

“Cinematic events,” and while failure doesn’t actually change the outcome, success

can net you some shiny things to put on your monster.

This is the Final Fantasy that XIII could’ve been. But since our current paradigm cannot

alter the past (without stepping on Orwell’s toes), we needed to have an entirely new game,

one that attempts to undo the transgressions of its predecessor. It succeeds in most aspects,

but some are still debatable. Just listen to “Crazy Chocobo” if you need a new divisive

issue to argue. If Final Fantasy X-2 was the “Charlie’s Angels” of the series, XIII-2

is Square’s answer to Doctor Who. I’m sure Amano’s on board with the concept of

a scarf that epic.