It's hard for me to decide which I hate more as a sequel to an FF game I loved, this or X-2. Both of them manage to do what feels like irreparable damage to the epic tales that their predecessors were.

The entire story is founded on a stupid fucking retcon that cheapens the ending of XIII, and it only gets worse from there. I've watched music videos that have a more coherent plot than whatever this pile of shit is. It hamfists in elements of time travel and parallel worlds that are not a part of the original game's mythos at all, brings in an unwanted and unnecessary character for no apparent reason except as the writer's OC in this fanfiction that somehow gaslit its way to official status. Don't be fucking fooled. It's all a sham: the story is nonsensical, meandering and entirely at odds with all that is good in the world. I absolutely despise stories like these that constantly use big words like 'chronicle paradox' and 'forbidden history' and 'spacetime vortex' in a vain attempt to hide the fact that they absolutely SUCK. They suck in every single one of the multiple universes the writers use as an excuse for their storytelling ineptitude.

I couldn't wait for this game to shut the fuck up, I stopped caring entirely. And true, just like XIII before it, it looks dazzling, the visuals are so good that it feels like playing a CGI film, but it's hard to appreciate when it stands for absolutely nothing, and that little shit-gremlin of a moglin keeps yelling KUPO KUPO KUPOOOO in every scene so we can have some kawaii shit to go with the countless layers of obfuscation that drive this plot into the ground. If I had a gun I'd shoot that fucking hell-cherub so fast.

The gameplay isn't good either. I don't begrudge Final Fantasy XIII for its linearity at all; this game on the other hand is filled with false choices that are just time-wasting mechanics posing as open-endedness. For example, early on you're presented with the 'choice' to either fight a boss head-on or walk three paces along an alternative path to get a device that weakens him. My manly nature dictates that I fight him head-on without resorting to trickery, but he will one-hit kill your party, so you're forced to take the second option anyway. Then why is it a choice at all? That's right: to pretend this game isn't every bit as linear as its predecessor, when it is, when it's a fucking SHAM. To waste your fucking time. The game also really likes to recycle its bosses; to interrupt boss fights with cinematic moments and QTEs and cutscenes; to basically do all that video games of this time were derided for in such an especially egregious fashion that even I found them annoying.

The developers go all in on deceiving players into thinking they have any input into the story, by having four dialogue options pop up with a hilariously fancy 'Live Trigger!' splash in every conversation. Fuck them too. I don't get at all what's the appeal of these 'choices' that don't change one iota of the game, and the way they're presented like such a huge feature is amusing to see in the same way watching a Lilliputian attempt to score a three-point field goal would be amusing. Having only two party members and a rotating cast of captive Pokemon doesn't do it for me either. The battle system feels lesser than its predecessor with inconsequential features like Wounds (lowering your maximum HP) put in only for the sake of having more new features.

The music is nice, but I don't feel it melds into the game well pretty often - it's like they composed a lot of good tracks in a vacuum and then overlaid them into the game without too much consideration for context. In a game where the voice actors can't even get the inflections of their lines right, that would be too much to ask.

This game is a disservice and a blight on its predecessor, which I absolutely loved. It should have been left to rot on whatever page of Fanfiction.net it was uploaded to.

In short, I am mildly upset with this game.