The epic quest is over, tied up. It’s time to move on. Things just aren’t going on in the natural way, though. There is a glaring absence. Something isn’t right. It becomes necessary to loop back again, as time gets ever more messed up. Between the UK release dates of Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X, five years passed. Between X and XIII, it was eight years, at the end of which Final Fantasy XIII was not exactly an uncomplicated success. In a time with plenty of indicators of the stark realities of increased game budgets and production timescales, the fact Final Fantasy XIII still got a direct sequel is one of the more obvious ones.
For a game themed around time travel, it’s also fascinating how much of its approach is another loop around history. As the first entry for a new console generation, Final Fantasy X streamlined the sci-fi fantasy RPG formula into something much more linear with less opportunity to get off the beaten track, and battle strategy to the fore. Final Fantasy XIII did the same, but even more so. Final Fantasy X-2 had the left behind characters reckon with the absence of X’s main hero, and cut corners by having you visit re-used locations, chosen from a menu. It also added greater customisability into the combat to compensate for simplification elsewhere. Final Fantasy XIII-2… you get the idea. They even both have an awkward jump button and collectible outfits.
In Final Fantasy XIII-2, that combat expansion comes through adding in a Pokémon-style collection element. Beat regular enemies and you’ll sometimes acquire the use of them, to go into the otherwise empty third party member slot. You can have up to three monsters set up at a time across your six ‘paradigm’ strategies, so you can specialise further still by including monsters with particular skills. As a system it doesn’t have the same swagger and thematic unity as X-2’s magical girl transformations, but it takes the best thing about XIII and improves on it even more. Turning battles around with a well-timed strategic swap feels better than ever. Also, you can give your monsters cute hats.
The hats are just the start of Final Fantasy XIII-2 adding a great deal more lightness to the mix. Serah is a much more obviously fun presence than her taciturn sister Lightning was. The other main character Noel, beamed in from the future and/or Kingdom Hearts, plays off her well. The world is not populated with a lot of deep characters, but there is more of a human presence than in the previous game. The menu-based shops are replaced with a chocobo-themed woman who turns up everywhere you go (Serah’s relatable verdict on Chocolina: “I’m a little overwhelmed and slightly confused, to be honest.”).
During some of the game’s conversations and plot advancements you get choices of what to say, and there are generally funny options in there. Sometimes the funny option is even the correct one, like the looping future robot boss fight that only ends when you choose to escape from an unfavourable paradox by screaming at Hope across time and space.
I was especially intrigued about Final Fantasy XIII-2’s time travel approach having read a suggestion that it was inspired by Doctor Who of the time. Which, allowing for at least a year’s run-up even on the accelerated timeline of this kind of sequel, places us around December 2010 when Doctor Who was giving us Steven Moffat’s magnificent A Christmas Carol, which turned its Scrooge stand-in into his own Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
I have been able to find no proof of it actually being cited by anyone at Square Enix as an influence on Final Fantasy XIII-2, and there are other potential influences closer to home for them. By 2010, Japan had a live action sequel to The Girl Who Leapt Through Time inspired by the success of the anime version four years earlier. 2009 indie game Steins;Gate didn’t just do time travel, but did it with a story that XIII-2 parallels in other ways, like its innocent cursed to die again and again across different timelines.
Wherever the inspiration lay, how Final Fantasy XIII-2 uses time travel is a big factor in making it more than just a repeat of the limited successes of Final Fantasy X-2. The genius is that as it shuttles about from place to place and timeline to timeline in a confusing and disjointed way befitting a corner-cutting sequel, it builds this confusion into an integral part of its plot and tone. Nearly everything is up in the air, including the basic rules of causality. It uses this flux to maintain mysteries and a sense of haunting wrongness that makes its eventual resolutions hit even harder. As solutions to new development-timeline-imposed paradoxes go, it’s a pretty good one.
Top of the charts for week ending 4 February 2012:
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