Final Fantasy XIII-2

Not sure why it took me so long to return to Final Fantasy as far as the trophy guides go, but then again the last few were decided through random choice. Since I hadn't picked one yet and I was trying to think of something, I looked through my list, saw this, and said "Yeah, let's do this one, sounds great to me!"
So, this game was a lot of fun with the whole time travel mechanic, and the ability to tame monsters and have them join our parties, with their own preset Crystarium so that they could level with us (Leveling is a little more... streamlined in this one, each role stops at level 99, but it's not as hard to reach those as it might sound). The whole element of needing the right monsters with the right roles to fit your team was always pretty cool and it made you have to tame several in order to figure out the right ones to use. Plus you can feed your monsters to, well, other monsters, in order to pass down skills or bonuses, effectively a... simplified version of, say, breeding Pokémon for stats, egg moves, or IVs.

The game feels a little more open than Final Fantasy XIII. Sure you're still... kind of going in a linear fashion, but there's all sorts of ways to go in different paths and see places in different times and get new monsters, items, etc. After finishing the game, you have the ability "Paradox Scope," which allows you to go to certain scripted battles, make them a bit tougher, and if you succeed, you wind up with an alternate ending. There's almost 10 of them, including a bonus ending for the game if you retrieve all 160 fragments and see every Paradox Ending. For example, early in the game, you face a creature called Atlas. However, you weaken it as fighting it at full power that early in the game would be akin to suicide. However, coming back with better stats, abilities, etc., you can defeat it and get a whole different ending. Another example is late in the game when Serah is stuck in a dream-like state, and eventually gets helped by Fang and Vanille to escape from it, but if she stays with Lightning instead, the game ends right there (As a Paradox Ending, but still), so I love the different ways to change the game's events in small ways like this.

All in all, it was super enjoyable after Final Fantasy XIII, even if I watched my sister beat it before I could (Except I didn't take 45 minutes to defeat the 3 Bahamut Dragons in the very end of the game). It's a lot of fun and I think one day I'll have to play it again and have fun playing it again. See you tomorrow for the trophy guide!

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