E3 2011: Final Fantasy XIII-2 More of the Same
While at the Square Enix booth, I was able to get some hands on time with Final Fantasy XIII. I will not be talking about the graphics, because the build shown was very rough.
The demo portion follows Serah (Lightning’s sister) and a new character Noel. The two of them return to the Cocoon, and upon their arrival, Atlas seems to have a bone to pick with the two—at least his arm does. The battle starts and everything about the combat felt very familiar to XIII. During the fight, the arm smashes down in an attempt to flatten Serah and Noel, but a QTE popped up, allowing me to get them out of harm’s way. Herein lies the problem, I have an issue with quick time events. They are annoying, they only detract from gameplay, and they are hugely intrusive. After the boss fight, I had to perform more QTEs in order to bomb the hell out of the boss. The rest of the demo followed the two as they do mindless busy work in order to phase the rest of Atlas in and kill him.
Although the game felt familiar, there were a few changes to gameplay. When enemies were in attacking range, a circular meter would show up on the screen, going from green to red. If you attack the enemy while it’s in green, you get rewarded, but if you let it run to red, then the enemies gain the initial advantage. This system looked like it may be dumbed down slightly for the demo purpose, because I never saw what happened when it was red, since I always fought the enemies right when it popped up.
Also, there are new areas known as Temporal Rifts, but the full purpose of these rifts are unknown. When in the temporal rift, you walk on a platform that disappears while collecting crystals and getting to the ending portal. The rift that I experienced offered no real challenge, but I am curious to see what purpose they serve in the final game.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 seems like the type of game that will appeal to fans of XIII, but it still has quite a way to go if it wishes to interest old fans of the franchise, or pull in new gamers.
