a game that was smaller scope than i expected, i found myself initially very disappointed with all the QoL i felt was missing and the dull feeling combat. but then the game sort of won me over for the next 50% of its runtime or so, with a surprisingly charming cast in an albeit by the numbers story. the gameplay managed to bring more options and fun with it too as i wasted away in the optional dungeons. speaking of which, the dungeon crawling experience in this game, especially by the end, is so mind numbingly bland and sluggish to navigate it ended up dragging down the whole thing for me. fun-ish combat ultimately couldn't make up for dungeon crawling where every dungeon feels the same and cycles through 3 themes for almost the entire game.

anyway this game is fine. way less substantial than i thought it was going to be which makes me sad, even on release you could kind of tell this was gonna just become a footnote in the series' history. it does some things pretty well and i dont hate having played it, but it feels incredibly cheap and the majority of the experience is seen within a few hours.
probably a decent sale game, if for no reason other than watching the main cast hang out, and ringo herself being really great.

the epitome of excess and exhaustion.

ive lost count of the amount of times i felt this game wasted my time, whether it be from getting stat checked every 30-45 minutes when i just want to play the main game, or making up said stats by doing tons of stale white bread side quests in a row, all while running through environments i would say are Way Too Big. the game's structure kills all the tolerance i could have for most of what its putting to the table tbh

combat is fine i guess, some of the encounters have an allure to them and i like challenging myself and playing with all the different characters, but way too many major fights end up with me face rolling every art (used appropriately obviously) and barely scraping by, except in an "i cheesed the game" sort of way instead of one where i felt like i did anything fun. its really formulaic and all about working toward Big Finisher that lets you burst the enemy for free.

i dropped it before i could get to the interesting story bits i think but man i switched to casual mode (combat was a little more fun) and i still could just not fathom playing another 20 hours of this game. doing myself a service here

i think ff 13-2 is my favorite mainline (close enough) ff ive played. it's a strictly better 13 to me, in that it's much stronger in what It is trying to do with some of the common threads.

13 was a constant push forward where everything was your enemy. every possible encounter was a fight and the game had basically no detours from this. it thematically worked, but it was really not very great to play all the way through. i think i liked 13 more than most people but i can say it was around 40 hours of playing with a battle system that didn't have too much going on in the first place. it was heavily carried by the lovable cast and its fantastic soundtrack i m o.

13-2 is all about the small detours and exploring what could and should be. its a budgeted sequel where it'd obviously be on a smaller scale, but this game was perfectly designed around the limitations. like they took the assets and experience from 13 and had a perfect idea of what they wanted out of it next. theres much more to Do in this game's world, and its much easier to hang out in. they added Level Design (joke)!!!!! even though 13-2 has about a third of the main party size and about half of the story length, this game feels more meaningful and expansive than 13 ever could.

13-2's tone pulls everything together and makes it shine. where 13 says "damn the world kinda sucks but we're gonna try and stumble and charge forward until things are maybe ok again" 13-2 is more like "the future is uncertain and we don't know what exactly we should do but damn it we are Going to search every nook and cranny of this weird world until everything works again". 13-2's optimistic core gives the whole game such a confidence and everything about it is so pleasant to experience. it plays nice, the gameplay is 13 but faster and funner. this game's has one of my favorite soundtracks of all time now, the song "Full Speed Ahead" or "Run" encapsulates the experience of the whole game so well. its the first song you hear as soon as it gives you control and i dont think any rpg has made me want to immediately run around its world more than this game.

the Soul is immense. the Heart is bigger. play 13 if you want but you should really play 13-2.