Final Fantasy Insight News Feed http://www.ffinsight.com/index.php en-us CuteNews <![CDATA[[UPDATED] Final Fantasy XIII-2: The Lightning DLC explained]]> http://www.ffinsight.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1328095794&archive= Lightning would become an unlockable battle, with a chance to recruit her onto Serah and Noel's party following it, all in her Final Fantasy XIII appearance, rather than her updated Final Fantasy XIII-2 appearance. Yesterday Square Enix revealed the exact details of this downloadable content (DLC), along with a surprise none of us were expecting.

When downloaded, the DLC will unlock Lightning as a fightable opponent in the Coliseum, where defeating her will lead to the possibility of earning her crystal, and thus allowing her on your party. Lightning will come as a Ravager (presumably allowing her access to her signature Army of One ability). This was all pretty much known, the big surprise comes from the fact that halfway through the battle she'll be joined by her former boss at the Guardian Corps, Amodar (also known in Final Fantasy XIII-2 as Captain Cryptic), wielding a rather hefty looking gatling gun with a nasty blade attachment. Amodar will also be a recruitable enemy, and it seems he will join the party as a Commando.




So now for the exciting part, the Lightning & Amodar DLC will be available on both Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network in Japan on February 7th, and it will be available on Xbox Live on February 7th and the PlayStation Network on February 8th in Europe. No news yet as for North America.

On the subject of North America, the Square Enix Members (North America) blog updated last week with a couple of exclusive wallpapers, putting in place the two artworks used on the recently-revealed artworks for the Battle & Scenario Ultimania books.

Academia Scene 01:
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Valhalla Scene 01:
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Final Fantasy XIII-2 was released in Japan on December 15th and North America yesterday, and is due to be released in Europe on Friday.

Source: Square Enix

[UPDATE]

So about 30 minutes after I posted this news post and headed to work, Square Enix decided to slap me in the face by revealing some new screenshots for this DLC. Good going! So here they are.

]]> 1328095794 Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:29:54 +0000 <![CDATA[Aurora Nova: A new skin goes live]]> http://www.ffinsight.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1328024746&archive= Final Fantasy XIII-2 releases in North America, and it also marks the 15th anniversary since the release of Final Fantasy VII in Japan, a game which, despite opposing views on the title itself, is widely agreed to be a milestone of RPG gaming in bringing the genre to the wider audience. It is also the day of a little something I've been vaguely teasing and promising these last two months.

Aurora Nova: A New Dawn

Those of you who follow Final Fantasy Insight on Twitter (if you don't already, why not? We're over at @ffinsight) or myself (I'm a little harder to find, I'm not going to broadcast myself haha) may have already deduced that the project I've been working on is a new skin for the website.

I first came up with the basic idea for this skin back in October, but didn't really start work on it until midway through November, at which point I decided to release it on January 31st (for reasons that'll become more obvious in a second). Had I realised at the time that January 31st was also the date of Japan's 15th anniversary of Final Fantasy VII, I might have try to include a bit of a vibe of that game in the overall layout, I just didn't realise until last week. So, considering I put the final touches to the styling of the skin last night at about 11:45pm, this really is the skin I've spent the longest time working on.

Now, I've been debating whether to post a screenshot of the skin first, or talk about how I approached the design first. The reason for this is simply because, well I want you guys to read my approach, but at the same time I'm a little worried that you won't bother after seeing it, because (and I'll be honest here), although I think it's come out as a good solid piece of design work, it's a bit girly, something I hadn't intended, although I should have known it'd be the case considering the colour scheme I really had to go with based on the subject matter. So, at the risk of you all running away now, here's a picture of the layout.


Okay so it's [unintentionally] one for the girls (or just for anyone who's comfortable enough to use it, I myself will be using it for the forseeable future, because I actually like it), but here's a bit about it. Firstly, to elaborate on what I said earlier, I chose January 31st to launch the skin simply because, although not strictly a Final Fantasy XIII-2 layout, I just thought it'd be a nice idea to launch it at the same time as the game's North American release, which was chosen because it was the "middle release" between the three major territories.

I'd wanted to use that artwork of Serah as the basis for a skin because I wanted to challenge myself with the colour scheme, and every skin of Final Fantasy Insight Version 7 has been about challenging myself in new ways. Once again I believe I've proven my old university tutor wrong by making pink work as a design scheme, but I digress. Obviously, to fit in with the colour scheme of Serah, I had to work primarily with pink and purple, though I've also used hints of red from the strapping on her abdomen, grey from her gloves, yellow from her bicep cuff, and blue from her eyes. The little menu headers on the two outer bars use a combination of the yellow and grey, as well as taking some brown so as to evoke the shield on her abdomen - I wanted the text in it to be the same yellow, but it looked really dull, so I used white.

After the last skin (Crystal Reminiscence), which was all about nostalgia and bringing back the feel of the first six games to the site, I wanted this skin to be more modern, so I toyed with all sorts of new little features. From the unusual shapes for all of the site's units, to the design of the borders, to the design of the menu markers, and even the menu pointer when you highlight a link (inspired by Final Fantasy X, just thought I'd mention that).

So finally, the name, Aurora Nova. At first I'd just codenamed the design v7serah, but early into it's design it took on (in my mind) the name A New Dawn, symbolising the use of the newest game, the more modern approach (similar to my approach of the Vanille Pods skin), but more importantly simply the fact that the Final Fantasy XIII games make several allusions to "dawn", particularly in it's music, but it was reinforced for me when Caius was heard asking Yeul "Will they ever find the dawn?" in one of the game's trailers, which to my mind echoed a line of Serah's Theme in Final Fantasy XIII "Will we live to greet the dawn?" Either way, the simple fact was, the name I'd thought of sounded a bit...dull, and I retreated into the land that the Fabula Nova Crystallis -Final Fantasy XIII- likes to use a lot, Latin. A quick bit of research turned up Aurora Nova, and it has a much cooler ring to it haha.

A final note is that the only thing I don't like with the new skin is that it doesn't work exactly as I've designed it on Internet Explorer. I always try to do my designs to work on the major browsers, but unfortunately some of the styles I've used (particularly the shadow effect I've grown very fond of) just won't show. I took some painstaking time to make sure that text that used the shadow for effect could still be seen on Internet Explorer, because I didn't want to leave anyone out. Finally, I discovered that a couple of design choices I made won't show properly in any version of Internet Explorer except for the latest release, but again the site should still display fine, just without those little extras.

And I think that's it. If you've stayed with me this long to read this news post, thank you. And I hope you all won't be scared of checking out the new skin, or hopefully this might prompt you into checking out any of the other skins I've already designed. In fact, feel free to let us known which skin you use, there's plenty of ways to get in touch, either on the Forum, via our Live Chat, through the Contact Form, on our Facebook page, or finally by Twitter. So feel free to drop us a line!

Until next time, Tony!
]]> 1328024746 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:45:46 +0000 <![CDATA[Final Fantasy XIII-2: A note on spoilers...]]> http://www.ffinsight.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1327195427&archive=
Whilst I will mostly be trying to keep the Final Fantasy XIII-2 section as spoiler-free as I can until after the game's release (and even then it might take a while for any truly spoileriffic content will get in there, although obviously you can expect to find spoilers for Final Fantasy XIII), some content that I will be putting in there will invariably result in spoilers.

Case in point, my musical additions to the section over the last few weeks. Whilst the in-game music of Final Fantasy XIII featured lyrics, they were mostly all abstract in their meaning, and other than going out of your way to translate the Latin pieces, they weren't exactly heavy on the spoilers. With Final Fantasy XIII-2 on the other hand, things are a little bit different - some pieces, especially character pieces like Yeul's Theme and Noel's Theme ~The Last Travel~ can very easily become spoilers if you pay attention to the lyrics.

Similarly, a big addition this very day has been the game's soundtrack page (complete with liner notes). Whilst I can't personally attest to whether or not they are valid spoilers (having not played the game yet), certain track names (one in particular that I can think of) could potentially be spoilers for the game, and until such a time you might want to try and not pay too much attention to them until such a time that you're either happy to see spoilers or I can confirm whether or not there are any true spoilers in the titling of the tracks.
]]> 1327195427 Sun, 22 Jan 2012 01:23:47 +0000 <![CDATA[Final Fantasy XIII-2: A Demo Reviewed]]> http://www.ffinsight.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1326676027&archive= Final Fantasy XIII-2 demo having been available in North America and Europe for the better part of a week now, and having personally played it a few times for the sake of enjoyment and analysis, I thought now would be as good a time as any to review it.

Although only a demo, this review will use virtually the same basic formatting as one of Final Fantasy Insight's regular reviews, just without any use of imagery and of course lacking actual scores.

Story
The Final Fantasy XIII-2 demo takes place during the game's second chapter, named Episode 2: Unseen Intruder, and is set in the Bresha Ruins in the year 005 AF. This means that we miss some of the important character introductions, and we're dropped straight into the plot of Noel Kreiss seeing Cocoon from the inside for the very first time. It seems that we get to play the majority of Episode 2, although a few key segments have been taken out (presumably to keep some of the plot a mystery), and I'd be lying if I said it was the most plot-heavy of demos. We hear a lot about Paradoxes, which are distortions in time and space in locations across the world across time caused by something that shouldn't belong in that time.

In this demo, we are confronted with a boss battle against the so-called Paradox Alpha (given the name Atlas following the battle) as soon as it begins, and the rest of the chapter deals with Serah and Noel trying to find a way to defeat it, hopefully resolving the Paradox of that time and location. Plotwise, that's about it, as a key scene it has removed is Alyssa Zaidelle's introduction, which happens after the fight with Paradox Alpha. The demo cuts out a soon as you defeat Atlas at the end of the Episode, leaving out the final cutscenes of plot, presumably the scene shown in numerous trailers where Alyssa talks about her dead friends, as throughout the demo she contacts Serah and Noel over radio to ask if they can find a cemetary.

The Bresha Ruins -005 AF- are home to a research team from the Academy who are studying the nature of the Paradoxes in the area, believed to be centered around the presence of Atlas. We are also introduced to Chocolina, the time-travelling merchant who is the game's one-stop-shop for shopping. She is the game's only point of sale, and she appears more than frequently throughout the game, with four locations in the Bresha Ruins of the demo.

Gameplay
Gameplay is really where the meat of the demo happens, and we're given quite a free reign on a large majority of the game's exploration and battle mechanics. The battle system is taken from the final build of the game, including the ability to switch party leader in the heat of battle, and we also have free access to the battle-related options on the in-game menu outside of battle, meaning we can access the Crystarium, alter our Paradigm Pack (which is the set of three monsters you can switch in and out of Paradigms), and the full customisation of monsters, which includes their adornments (two available in the demo), names, and the Infusion system.

On the actual battle controls, if you've played Final Fantasy XIII, things will be familiar enough, so I won't linger there too much. The main differences are how Paradigm Shift animations are now much shorter, the addition of Feral Links, and the entry into battle using the Mog Clock system. It's outside of battle that all the changes have happened.

Most importantly is probably the adidition of a monster-based third character in battle. A large quantity (see: not all) of enemies in the game have a chance to be recruited post-battle; this will be shown by a crystal floating up from the battlefield once all the enemies are defeated, and in the battle results screen, the recruited enemies will flash blue. The enemy will be recruited at Level 1, and will be immediately available to put into your Paradigm Pack, should you so wish. Each enemy is now given a set Paradigm Role, which is now included on their bestiary entry, visible as soon as you enter battle alongside whether or not they can be "Tamed". The Feral Links provide really quite fun mini-breaks from the normal flow of battle, and it's become something of a fun pastime of mine to try and see how quickly I can press the commands to get as high a bonus as possible.

Serah, Noel, and any monster in your inventory are all levelled up via the Crystarium (returning from Final Fantasy XIII), though the method how differs between the two characters and the recruited enemy. Without getting too bogged down in the exact nature of it (I'll reserve that for the proper page in the Final Fantasy XIII-2 section), stat progression is decided by which Role you level up on large nodes on the Crystarium, whilst abilities are restricted to the level of the Roles. Every time a full circuit of the Crystarium tier is completed, we get to choose a special bonus, ranging from a Role Bonus (increased attack power for Commando, faster Chain increase for Ravager, etc...), to extra ATB slots, even to unlocking Roles you currently don't have (Serah and Noel start off with only having access to Commando, Ravager, Sentinel, and Medic in the demo).

Monsters don't gain CP, but still have access to the Crystarium (which is shaped like the monster itself), where progression is determined by consuming certain items throughout the game. These otherwise-useless items are similar in existence to the Components from Final Fantasy  XIII, and are similarly split into organic and manmade categories, with organic monsters consuming organic ones, and robotic enemies consuming the inorganic ones. As they increase in level, they will need a higher number of items to increase in level, and further down the line will need a higher "grade" of item, and each item has an associated stat boost that affects the growth of the monster. As with Serah and Noel's various Roles, each monster will gain different abilities at different levels, and will gain bonuses every time they complete the tier of their Crystarium.

The big difference for enemies comes from the ability to Infuse each enemy with another one. This allows any enemy to consume the crystal of another enemy to gain their passive abilities and even some of their attacks and magical abilities should they be allowed to wield them (this, for example, allows an enemy who learns Fire abilities exclusively to gain access to Blizzard). This removes the enemy "consumed" from the inventory, allowing the player to recruit another Level 1 monster of the same type and starting again.

The Crystarium and monster building in the demo provides quite a lot of depth (surprisingly just for a demo), and I can see it becoming something very strategic and interesting to use in the full game itself.

Finally, for exploration we have two new abilities in the demo (there's more in the final game), free-jumping and Mog Hunt. I'll be honest and say I was a little bit underwhelmed by the jumping in the demo, as we don't really get to use it for much, and the times when it's best used is still shown by the glowing blue rings used in Final Fantasy XIII-2, so we don't get to really gain anything special through it. Whether or not this is different in the final game, I don't know. Mog Hunt sees a bit more use, in that there are several items hidden throughout the demo that Mog will sense (and one in particular that he won't, but you can see it sort of shimmering), and at the press of a button he'll warp time and space to make the treasure chest appear. Hunting for every one of these will probably be a lot more time consuming in the final game, especially with all the different locations and time zones available.

I was surprised at the level of freedom we had to explore the game's system, with what appears to be full access to the game's menus and battle options, it gave a really good taster of what the final game will have to offer, and I have to say I'm impressed. After my first playthrough I thought it might get boring in the long run, but I explored the Infusion system in particular in subsequent replays, and found myself trying to create the "ultimate monster" just for the demo. Speaking of which, a huge recommendation if you haven't played the demo, if you want a Commando monster, try and get the Meonekton, they're fairly easy to kill and yet have surprisingly high stats (especially compared to the Uridimmu, which is harder to fight and yet weaker once on your team).

Graphics and Design
Final Fantasy XIII-2 runs on the same engine as it's predecessor, so there aren't any huge surprises here. They're not the best graphics of this generation, but everything is surperbly detailed, and some improvements have undeniably been made to the character models. This is particularly noticeable on Serah's hair during the game's closeups, but also to some of the quirks of movement to the characters, like Serah using her arm to wipe her brow every so often when running. This makes the design in this aspect an improvement, but where one thing is better, other things make it worse. Although I like Mog (more on that in a second), I don't get why he looks like he's made of plastic. With the undeniable effort made in the looks of the characters (though it has to be said, with several NPCs I couldn't help but notice how they seemed to be pieced together from elements of characters in Final Fantasy XIII, like men in PSICOM uniforms, but with Yaag Rosch's hair, etc...), it seems like Mog is still a work-in-progress, without any kind of fur detail. My only understanding of this is that it *could* have been done so that hiss transition into a non-furry weapon for Serah would be believable.

Speaking of weaponry, that's my other gripe in terms of design in the demo. Whilst I applaud the fact that we can gain a new weapon for both Serah and Noel, I was somewhat disappointed to discover that these weapons are simply recolours of their default weapons (not particularly attractive recolours at that), and I hope this won't be the overriding case throughout the game (at least we know the DLC weapons look different).

On the plus side is something that Square Enix have gone to great lengths to tell us about, and that's the opening up of locations. Even at an early stage of the game as it is, the Bresha Ruins show that they really have expanded the location design for the game, allowing a choice of different paths, allowing gamers to never check out some places should they not wish to. It gives much more freedom of exploration, though it should be noted that each map has a "completion" rating, and from what I've heard (so don't quote me on it), you are rewarded for completing each map.

Music & Sound
The Final Fantasy XIII-2 demo uses, rather ironically, thirteen pieces of music (I played through the demo three times just to catch them all) - with one of these being taken from the Final Fantasy XIII soundtrack (Desperate Struggle, used in the battle against a Cie'th), and one of which features in two "mixes" (haha, thirteen tracks, two mixes, XIII-2 anyone?) - followed by some extra music during a post-demo trailer. The music ranges from standard instrumental music, to electronic pieces, and includes one of the game's vocal pieces, a relatively unobstrusive rap (Worlds Collide) during the battle against Paradox Alpha. I've been listening to the game's soundtrack on repeat since it's release in december, and I'm quite a fan of it, even some of those tracks that other people have been less than enthusiastic over. In terms of the demo, however, the only track in it that has really caused any sort of contention is the background music used throughout the Bresha Ruins, Invisible Invader (I wouldn't be surprised to find out it's official English name is Unseen Intruder, as with the Episode title).

On the game's official soundtrack, Invisible Invader features lyrics performed in a rap style by Aimee Blackshleger, and is a song that has been of some comment, with quite a large amount of negative criticism levelled at it, mostly stemming (as far as I'm aware), from the actual lyrics rather than the performer. Now I don't know if this is the case in the Japanese game (as there are several different time zones, so the music may differ in ways between each time zone), but the demo doesn't feature any lyrics. Personally I think this version of the track isn't as interesting, but I suppose it's completely subjective.

Voicing obviously returns, and it's a bit of a mixed bag from what I've picked up in the demo. Laura Bailey's return as Serah is very welcome for me, I love Laura Bailey, and she helps to make Serah such a good character. Jason Marsden seems nicely suited to being Noel, he certainly sounds better in the demo than he did in the game's trailers (I don't know what it is with Square Enix and trailers, but they certainly seem to make the voices sound flat and emotionless). I'm probably one of the few people who enjoy the voice of Mog (we don't know who voices him yet, but I've been betting on Ariel Winter) - at least from the perspective of the acting, where I really hear nothing wrong (I just keep on remembering Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon, that was painful). My only issue with Mog is that he's male, and yet he undeniably sounds like a girl, and not just a woman trying to sound like a young boy but a girl. Its the kind of thing that doesn't bother me as much with the Japanese voice, but it really disturbs me in English. The other complaint I've heard alot (and I'll echo to a degree) is Chocolina, whilst some of her lines are fine (and I'm hoping that'll be the majority case in the game), there's something intensely grating about the rest of them that just makes me think of "cheap anime voicing".

Length & Replayability
This will be a short one, it's only a demo (the rest of the review has turned out a lot longer than I'd intended). The demo can probably comfortably be finished in roughly an hour, though it can take longer if you want to try out everything. As well as tracking down Atlas, there are three sidequests (two fetch quests and an enemy-kill quest), and with a total of nine different enemies to catch and develop, there's plenty of things to get lost in, especially coupled with a lack of restrictions on how to develop Serah and Noel (monsters are restricted due to the unavailability of high-grade items). My longest playthrough of the demo was today, clocking in at over three hours, during which I played a lot with the Infusion system.

Conclusion
So, to finish off what was meant to be a mini-review, I was nicely impressed with the demo. While it didn't give much in terms of plot, it more than made up for it in gameplay features, which so far have definitely gone to show that the developers took on board several of the criticisms levelled at Final Fantasy XIII. If you can, I'd strongly recommend checking the demo out before the game's release in the next couple of weeks, and if you can't, all I can really say is that from the demo, I'm very excited at the prospect of the game's playability!
]]> 1326676027 Mon, 16 Jan 2012 01:07:07 +0000