I've been playing through it, and just finished the main storyline. Wondering if anyone else was interested in the game and wanted to chat about it.

I've been playing some of it also and I actually really love the storyline and see serious improvements from XIII, granted I loved that one too. c: I can't say we're far into it but we just beat Atlas which I do know isn't that far into the story. There's just so much exploring we needed to do, and not enough time to do it xD.

Who was your favorite character? I personally enjoy Caius the most. :)

I enjoyed many of the improvements on XIII as well. The more open environments, and the generally quicker pace in battles was welcomed. Also, having all the menu options open up sooner, and being able to ride chocobos around, and sidequests! All of it contributes to a more solid experience. If you want my advice, there's certainly plenty of diversions to take, but I'd recommend sticking with the main story at first. I found myself overleveled for all but the final boss fight because I focused too much on doing all the sidequests as soon as they became available.

It's hard to pick a favourite character. In XIII I liked Snow and Sazh, and in this one I'm enjoying Serah and Noel. Noel gets a bit overdramatic sometimes (can't imagine spending any significant length of time with him, he's always so serious) but overall he's alright. Caius makes a good villain. Chocolina makes an infuriating shopkeeper.

Haha yeah I agree. I love how the Crystalarium is set up, and how you don't have to wait to expand it. I also noticed it was much harder at first to get five star battles. For some reason I kept getting three stars at the beginning. Of course that was until I figured out I had to use the Paradigms that I didn't miss. They're good for battles but I am horrible with strategy so it made it harder xD. Thanks for the tip! Every time we get a new ability, we end up going back to the first level and looking around to see if there is anything we need. Gotta love the strategy guide xD

Haha Noel isn't too bad but I can't say he's anywhere near my favorite xD. I do love Lightning's near gear and Chocolina looks like a chocobo stripper xD

The new crystarium is an improvement from before. Although I didn't like the enforced level caps, I guess it kept you from outleveling the area. But I prefer the freedom to develop as I please. I maxed out Commando for Noel and Ravager for Serah before leveling much of anything else, so they were pretty overpowered, lol.

Paradigms are tricky to get the hang of. Once you become able to tame monsters it becomes much easier. If you want I can give you some advice on which monsters are good. But I suppose you have the strategy guide for that. :P Typically though I would use RAV RAV COM or RAV COM COM by default. Unless you want to exploit elemental weaknesses, the only real difference is how quickly you stagger, so I'd switch to more RAVs when I wanted to stagger quickly, for those annoying enemies that require it.

Lightning's new outfit is pretty cool. I don't much care for the excess of thigh but I guess given Serah's outfit I can't really complain about that. Speaking of which, I found it weird how confused she was that this mysterious outfit appeared on her, and yet she never bothered changing out of it. Seems to me that she would get cold, especially in some of the raining or snowing areas.

Yeah, Chocolina is totally a Chocobo stripper. And the way she follows you through time, and appears in random, otherwise unpopulated areas is a bit disconcerting.

Lol there are bonuses you get which I can't complain about though. xD I suppose battling was much easier then that way. I love just staying in one area for so long and finding those rare monsters you see here and there. Definitely makes it funner.

Oh yeah of course. c: The book actually suggested to use a Sentinel for certain enemies so we got a Cogwork Knight which for the record was very difficult to catch for some reason. The one thing that does kinda disappoint me is that there are only two playable characters, and the rest are just minors. It kinda saddened me. : Also there doesn't appear to be summonings either(unless you count the Chaos Bahamut you fight)

I agree with that. If she had a skirt on I'd feel much better. I did love the feathers though. Then again feathers were always my thing haha. Isn't Serah's secret outfit her schoolgirl one? I'd rather control her in that outfit then the one where she looks like a hooker xD. At least Noel dressed appropriately.

Haha exactly. Stalker chocobo! That and her being overly outgoing kinda creeps me out after awhile!

Don't get me wrong, I definitely went back to other areas. I just kinda wished I had waited so I wasn't so overpowered for the next area. Finding rare monsters becomes easier once you get a certain skill later on anyway.

Sentinels have always been recommended but I find they have limited use, especially if you want to 5 star a battle. It doesn't matter how many times one of your party members dies as long as you win fast. So I favoured medics to sentinels. Of course, there are some fights were you absolutely need to tortoise it up, but those are few and mostly optional.

I was a bit disappointed when I discovered Serah and Noel were the only playable characters. I thought maybe you'd team up with some new characters, and maybe a few old favourites, and have another party of six. But I am a fan of the monster system. Lots of options there. And no, summons are completely removed. The other techniques like Quake and Renew are removed as well. Not too disappointing, I wasn't a huge fan.

Yeah Serah's outfit from XIII is an option though I don't know how to unlock it.

One of my favourite things is a very small thing, but the speed at which you switch paradigms has been increased. In XIII, the first shift of any battle had to show each member individually shifting. It always annoyed me.

Yeah I noticed the enemies were much easier when I went back and did some training and then went back to Bresha. I do like a challenge. I'll have to keep note of that skill~

Hm yeah that's true. I think right now the issue is that we're limited on any good monsters so we have to wait. The sentinel we have right now does help us though. That's for sure. Kinda dreading fighting the huge dinosaur monster that we had to fight in XIII. This time it has around 6m hp.

Aw I always thought what made Final Fantasy was the summonings. That's definitely a bummer for me. I guess the whole monster aspect makes up for it if you catch the right ones tho it does make me think of Pokemon.

I believe you get a game code if you preordered the game. You then have to download the content using xbox live.

Oh I noticed that too! Haha xD. Definitely useful

Hmm, then it would seem I missed out on the alternate outfit. Oh well, I've never cared too much about cosmetic changes. Never really used adornments on my monsters ever. I noticed there's $3 DLC for an alt outfit for Noel, but I'm completely uninterested.

Do you mean the Long Gui? That thing is a beast, I never got strong enough to defeat one in FFXIII. I still can't do it yet in XIII-2. You definitely need the Tortoise paradigm (3x SEN) if you want to withstand his Ultima. Yes, you need to be a tortoise to take down a giant turtle.

The monster taming aspect is similar to Pokemon, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Pokemon rules. :P

I hate how things are geared towards DLC. Isn't there an unlockable ending you get via that? I remember reading a review on amazon that ended up giving the game a really bad rating that said that you had to download the ending.

Yes! I had forgotten his name xD. Haha it does make sense though. In general that thing I can imagine is much harder then any bosses in the game. Hell it's hp is almost 6x more then the last boss itself!

xD Agreed but that was immediately what I thought. Kinda surprising that they'd replace having other people with monsters tho I do like the idea xD.

Yeah DLC isn't my favourite thing. I don't mind spending extra money on a game for worthwhile content but the currently available stuff (Noel outfit, and bonus battle against Lightning and Amodar) isn't worth it at all, and downloading stuff that should have been in the original game is bad. I hadn't heard anything about downloading the ending. At the risk of revealing a bit about the ending, it's not terribly conclusive, but I thought that would be continued in another, retail game. Is that going to be DLC instead?

I think this game just worked better with 2 playable characters. There's a lot less plot overall than in XIII. XIII was about each of the six, and they were each explored in detail. In XIII-2, the plot just isn't about as many different people.

Yeah that Long Gui fight...I'm dreading it. I need to raise my stats up as high as they go and get some great monsters before I try again. Instant Ultima wipe is not something I want to relive.

Oh yeah I know that it's not very conclusive and doesn't it literally say "To be Continued"? The reviewer might have been insane for all I know but I was looking up themes and it said on one of the related videos something about DLC Paradox Ending. It could be wrong though. I didn't click it because I didn't want a killer spoiler.

Yeah that's true. I didn't think of that. No wonder XIII had so many discs!

Now you know ahead of time what to expect xD. Those things were so epic in XIII. I remember following one around the planes in XIII haha.

I guess I'll do some research after I'm finished with the game. I still have lots of sidequests to do, lots of fragments to collect, so I'll be at the game for a while still. Lots of value there.

Of course! I'll be playing the next level tomorrow night. Looking forward to it xD

Awesome. Come back here and share your thoughts after. :)

Oh my god ff13-2.

The sequel is so much better than the original. I beat the main storyline about a week ago. I'm currently working on unlocking the secret ending. I'm at 159/160 fragments. All I have to do is BEAT EVERY FREAKING MONSTER IN THE GAME ;-;.

Caius is actually my favorite ff villain at this point. He's willing to give up everything just to accomplish his goal. That's deep. And stuff.

There's no DLC ending. Yet. That's been a rumour that has existed for a while now, especially after one of the makers of the game "explained" what the To Be Continued meant. There will be story DLC though, the one for Sazh is coming next week - it'll also add casino games (separate costume DLC also coming soon). March will apparently have Jihl Nabaat from XIII show up as a Colosseum fight and April is apparently a big expansion (possibly a Lightning one).

Personally I felt the Lightning/Amodar fight was worth the money (I was surprised it was that low even considering the prices of the outfits xD), and I love having them as party members despite them not being the best Rav & Com. They're still filling those spots for me in my party unless I decide to use awesome/nostalgic ones like Cactuars, Tonberries or [summon monster you can tame, but I won't name because it's a spoiler].

Completed the game and got all the trophies last week, really enjoyed the story :D Surprisingly dark - especially when compared to XIII xD After I finished all trophies, I went to tame the few remaining monsters I hadn't yet tamed during the trophy hunting and fully identified all of them (including ones that can't be tamed) too (so they all had checkmarks in the bestiary) ^^

Haha I feel like I am late to beating the game since I am only at the first battle with Caius. I do agree though, he is the best FF villian. c:

Oh wow that's not a bad expansion at all. I really look forward to it! More of a reason to use my Xbox live.

The only thing that bothers me is you can't literally summon a monster like you could in all other FFs. By that I mean like Shiva, Ifrit, Bahamut etc. I can see it possible to getting Bahamut in the game as tamed though since well there's a lot of screen time with them in general in that game.

Also wish the summons were not so..robotic. Well in the past XIII I can't say I enjoyed it as much because I didn't really care for the "transformer" esque ness of the summons. It just doesn't seem clever to me.

Aw man I can imagine how many hours you have on the game then xD

Side note. Caius's battle theme is omfg.

That is all.

And I kinda did miss summons, but then I just pretended the monsters were summons without fancy animations :']

Completed bestiary friends forever. The worst enemies to fight? Yomi and that stupid hand cie'th in Oerba 400 AF. Oh my god that battle takes forever.

And is it me, or did it take like 500 battles to get Amodar on your team, but like two to get Lightning?

XD I can literally listen to that theme all day haha. Oh wait, I have!

Haha but those pretty animations made it amazing!