After the release of Final Fantasy XIII on Steam, Square Enix really needed to step up their game for the Final Fantasy XIII-2 release. How successful were they?
I don’t really make it that much of a secret that Final Fantasy XIII-2 is my favorite game of the trilogy. I loved how it vastly improved on Final Fantasy XIII, even if the story was a bit lackluster at times. I loved how fast paced the battles felt, even if they did remove easy access to Haste. So… What did I think of it on Steam? Well…
It’s better and yet worse than Final Fantasy XIII. It actually launched with resolution options, however they are a bit… odd. For windowed mode you have two choices: 1280×720 or 1920×1080. Fullscreen has a variety of options between those two. Isn’t it typically the other way around? That’s what I thought. Fullscreen also just seems to lag more in general, even when using the exact same settings as used on windowed mode.
Speaking of lag, there seems to be a lot more random lag spots in Final Fantasy XIII-2. While Final Fantasy XIII suffered FPS jumps both ways (mainly going up and causing sped up cutscenes), XIII-2 just seems to suffer from lag. It’s not even 
lag that makes sense either. One boss, the flan (first time) of Sunleth, was running in slow motion for around 90% of the fight. However, my characters were perfectly fine. There was about 2 rounds of attacks where he went back to normal speed, but most of them were running insanely slow. Some spells also cause the game to just choke it seems, like Ruinga. I just go to cry any time Ruinga is cast as I just watch my FPS plummet for a bit.
One of the biggest features of this release is that it included almost every single piece of DLC. The only ones excluded were the Mass Effect and Assassin’s Creed outfits, along with… the weapons? Okay. It was sad to find out that the weapons weren’t there, especially considering they were the main ones I used for a VERY long time on the console version. However, hope you don’t plan on playing that DLC any time soon! Until you beat the final boss, the only DLC you will have access to is the outfits. While this means you can dress Mog up adorably, it also means you won’t be fighting Omega or Gilgamesh any time soon. Needless to say, I was very disappointed… especially since I typically start doing some of the earlier coliseum fights BEFORE I beat the game.
So while yes, Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a step up from Final Fantasy XIII it seems some major steps back also happened. HOW these lag issues with some spells and bosses happened, I have no clue. Also, the rain. What happened to the rain that looked perfectly fine on console? Really, what happened to it? Also, the COMPLETE blocking of DLC (outside of outfits)
until post-game is slightly irritating to say the least. There’s even some signs of “we didn’t bother changing any messages” in the game, as I spotted a “in future downloadable content” message in Serendipity (for the content that is within Heads and Tails… which is locked until post-game).
Do I recommend it? If you haven’t played the game on console then yes. Even if you have and would like to replay it again on Steam, then sure. However, there really are some SERIOUS lag issues in some battles.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to begin the quest for those 160 fragments… again.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 Steam Release Review
3/5
Final Fantasy XIII-2 is available now for Steam. It is also available on Amazon for PlayStation 3 and XBox 360.
