Freedom. It's been so absent from the past few Final Fantasy games that I don't know what to do with it when it's offered to me a plate.
XIII-2 gives you freedom and lots of it. But sometimes at the expense of leaving you confused. XIII held your hand in a vice like grip until your circulation cut off and you were unable to even play the game...or what there was to actually play. (It's up for debate whether hammering the A button in battles with the occasional LB press is playing a game). We all complained. We all hated it. So Square Enix said "Fuck it. Do what you like and make your own way through this shit" and gave us XIII-2.
This new-found freedom is a welcomed thing, which harkens back to the days when we could blimp it from location to location as we pleased. But the freedom often comes at the expense of being provided with very little direction. I've found myself at odds on where to go and have had to just meander around and explore until I eventually found the narrative path and was able to continue along it. I may be nitpicking. I might be rubbish at this game. Or perhaps I have become so acclimatized to the linearity of what had become a Final Fantasy game that I can't cope with this complete freedom shit. Either way, I hit up GameFAQs for a guide. Because I got fucking sick of having to keep second guessing which time gate I need to access with which artefact to move onto the next one.
XIII-2 gives you freedom and lots of it. But sometimes at the expense of leaving you confused. XIII held your hand in a vice like grip until your circulation cut off and you were unable to even play the game...or what there was to actually play. (It's up for debate whether hammering the A button in battles with the occasional LB press is playing a game). We all complained. We all hated it. So Square Enix said "Fuck it. Do what you like and make your own way through this shit" and gave us XIII-2.
This new-found freedom is a welcomed thing, which harkens back to the days when we could blimp it from location to location as we pleased. But the freedom often comes at the expense of being provided with very little direction. I've found myself at odds on where to go and have had to just meander around and explore until I eventually found the narrative path and was able to continue along it. I may be nitpicking. I might be rubbish at this game. Or perhaps I have become so acclimatized to the linearity of what had become a Final Fantasy game that I can't cope with this complete freedom shit. Either way, I hit up GameFAQs for a guide. Because I got fucking sick of having to keep second guessing which time gate I need to access with which artefact to move onto the next one.
It's different. This kind of freedom is very much unlike any of the past Final Fantasies because it's menu-based travel to the same places in different times, which becomes boring. I made it to the part where you're in the middle of chasing Caius and he crosses a bridge and you can't cross the bridge because you have to go to another time to find the key that will activate the bridge... stupid, and very much different from the days when you could actually roam the world. SE went from one extreme to the other with this one, and it's sad. Have they forgotten how to make good games?
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