SQUARE ENIX LOSES ALL SANITY, ANNOUNCES FINAL FANTASY 13-2

author=LockeZ
I think I disagree with every single thing in your post, except that FF13-2 can potentially be fun. It might be fun. But not if it's lighthearted, not if it's a tromp around Pulse, and sure as FUCK not if it is anything like FFX-2.

I would be afraid to offend any FFX-2 fanboys out there but I'm relatively positive there aren't any, that game symbolizes everything that Square has ever done wrong in any aspect of any game or series.

People who are not FF Fanboys (FF10, especially) and are people who can objectively look at a game and evaluate it can recognize that FFX-2 was actually superior to it's predecessor.

FFX had all the same problems as FF13. The entire game was one, narrow hall way. You only get a bare sense of freedom 80% of the way into the game, and the levelling system was made to promote min-maxing and overpowering your characters, and offered no real customization as everything was attainable through grinding.

While FFX-2 didn't make all of these things that much more enjoyable as a whole, each one was individually more enjoyable than its counterpart in FFX. It's lighthearted approach to a sequel to a particularly down-trodden and depressing game made it more enjoyable and easier to play. It's "mission" style structure promoted replay value, and the characters were more enjoyable. Anyone who complains about having three scantily clad women as your heroes is a homosexual (who, by the 'lol this game is gay' comments that they usually use to denounce it, would imply that homosexuals would actually enjoy the game!)

The best characters in FF13 were the female characters, and Sazh. Hope and Snow are shit all over, all the time in 'reviews' of the game as being bland, one sided, and boring characters. I think the same thing about most of the characters in the game, but Sazh, Fang, and Vanille were enjoyable (aside from Vanille's terrible voice acting.) Lightning was enjoyable once they got away from the emo-hero stereotype towards the end of the game, but could be made to be an enjoyable character as well.

I don't see the need to be able to "identify" with the characters in a Game. Yeah, it can help with immersion, but I don't remember ever identifying with any of the heroes in Super Mario RPG, and it was an awesome game. A lot of which had to do with it being fun, and the characters all had fun, non serious scenarios occasionally; and that was about all the development the characters ever got. Bowser with his slowly diminishing troop of bad guys, 'taking control' of the party. Geno's doll heritage. Mallow thinking he was a tadpole. The crazy queen of the clouds and her giant bird soldier thing. While I admit that the premise of this game was to be bubbly, the game only benefited from it.

To use FF as an example, up until FF7, the games blended seriousness in story telling with humor and fun in a balanced way and produced excellent results. FF7 had it's moments, but was a clear indicator of a much more serious, less bubbly story. FF8 essentially had no fun and humorous and can be recognized as one of the worst FF games (although I actually enjoyed it, for the most part, but for completely different reasons.) Then FF9 came along, and went back to a great hybrid of Fun and Seriousness. Anyone who was familiar with the Pre-FF7 titles who continued to play the FF series, were aware that FF9 was a huge step in the right direction. Unfortunately, I think the acclaim that FF10 got by the 'xbox' generation of gamers are what resulted in the death of the FF franchise, and FFX-2's negative reception is only punctuation to that point.