New Final Fantasy lost in its own convoluted storyline

Want a sequel that explores what happened to the people of Final Fantasy XIII after their home fell out of the sky at the end of the game? Well, too bad. We’re going time-travelling instead. While the game seems to have solved some of the problems of its predecessor, Final Fantasy XIII-2 gets wrapped up in endless convolution, making it short, shallow and ridiculous.

Imagine you pour a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle you bought from a yard sale onto the table. There are all these pretty, flashy pieces that don’t seem to make any sense, and you have no idea where to begin. Then you find out there are a bunch of pieces missing, and the ones you have don’t connect properly. That’s how it feels to decipher Final Fantasy XIII-2’s plot.

You control Serah, who — with new character from the future, Noel — must find her sister Lightning, who’s trapped in some world outside of time. So you start jumping around to different areas in time and space only to discover that the crystal pillar holding the fallen world of Cocoon above the larger, lower world of Gran Pulse has broken. You try to stop that for a little while, but then just sort of give up when returning character Hope hatches some crazy plan to make a brand new, artificial Cocoon instead. This is the sort of confusing, nonsensical mess the game devolves into.

Working against you is the absolute pinnacle of dumbass character design, Caius. Sporting asymmetrical purple-hair stuffed full of feathers and wielding a weapon laughably impractical even by Final Fantasy standards, this guy wants to destroy all of history to protect one reincarnating person from having to die young repeatedly. I don’t even care.

Absurd premise aside, you’d think in a time travel game you’d do things in the past and see the future change. But that would be too easy. In this game, there’s far more emphasis on changing the future to create new pasts — which is as convoluted as you’d expect. Some changes stem from the actions of Serah and Noel, but too often, fixing broken time periods involves “solving paradoxes.” And no, they didn’t bother to make these paradoxes based on smart plot inconsistencies that you have to unravel and fix. They’re just called “paradoxes,” and your task usually boils down to solving the same three puzzles over and over or fighting some monster displaced in time just because. Instead of using time-travel as an interesting plot device, it’s a naked excuse to get the player to do stuff.

The game even fails when it comes to the actual storytelling, opting over and over to ignore the “show, don’t tell” maxim in favour of lifeless voice-over summaries of the conversations you should be watching. The story is complication upon complication, and the game’s creators didn’t even bother to animate many of the scenes. And when they did, half the time you’re distracted from the very serious babble of “timeline this” and “change the past that” by the incessant noise from your Moogle companion — as if he’s yelling, “Hey, pay attention to me, I’m the cute mascot character!”

So the plot is totally balls, but if you’re hoping the gameplay will make up for it, you’re about to be disappointed. While the ability to revisit previously-explored areas and interact with non-playable characters are big steps forward, let’s not forget the decision to axe these features from the previous game was a gigantic leap backward. The game seems to introduce an actual merchant again, replacing the faceless digital stores of the last one. But rather than add some personality to the various locations and times available by creating shops that sell location and time-specific items, the game instead opts for a single merchant who inexplicably travels through time, despite one scene insisting that only Serah and Noel can do that. Oh, and she’s annoying as hell too.

There’s nothing in the gameplay that should win back those disappointed with the restrictions of the previous game. Meanwhile, the plot is absurd if you know what you’re getting into, and impenetrable if you’re a first-time player. Whether a Final Fantasy veteran or a total newcomer, there’s nothing in this game worthy of your time.

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