Final Fantasy XIII-2

For the main brand of Square Enix are difficult days after the tepid reception: in 2009 for Final Fantasy XIII, the terrible (false) departure of Final Fantasy XIV and incisive impact on the market of the last episode of Dragon Quest (the sentinels), teammate and main opponent of the historical series, the giant par excellence in JRPG appears more fragile than ever.

For this objective at the beginning of the development of Final Fantasy XIII-2 could seem quite ambitious: to regain the confidence of a frustrated fanbase and at the same time put to the right place the status of the series; the effects of this pressure on the developers disclaim cos, as was logical to expect, in a myriad of adjustment and refinement, in the certainty that this will be a precaution, highly conscious of the limitations of its predecessor and eager to impress in his every step.

Yoshinori Kitase has broached the subject with Eurogamer in the last E3, taking the opportunity to retrace the market launch of the ultra-hyped FFXIII: "With the title before we got, as expectations, great results in terms of sales, but at the same time we received mixed reviews from the players." "Among the positive aspects that were mentioned we can include the game system, a popular, so much so that our intention to include it in the 13TH-2; While against a major criticism that there were moves to tap the excessive linearit in the development of history during the course of the adventure ".

"All those points that were not good as we would have expected were examined in a scrupulous cos in order to make improvements or, where necessary, changes and new implementations: every single problem was so addressed".

The areas where the work of Kiteas seems to be focused are three; in the first instance are apparent efforts to make the world more open game cos to offer more possibilities of exploration players during their wandering.

For example, during a sequence of play that we've got to try we saw the duo formed by Serah and Noel move to chase of a giant that was causing some problems in New Bresha, a region of Cocoon; in this context the game not only put at your disposal several routes including choosing along with some side quests, but also gave the opportunity to reach the goal in different ways.

A new feature called Live periodically appears in fact to Trigger screen offering the option to choose how to approach the objective; always connect to the example shown in the demo, the game in this case we wondered if choose to throw us directly in the fight against the "boss" or if you decline the collision pointing against looking for a mysterious artifact that could turn the tide of battle in our favor.

After finding that the first option to death under the blows of the giant above, it is clear that an approach of this kind can be described as revolutionary in providing some type of freedom to the player, but at least you abandoned the approach like mother hen derided in the previous episode.