I put storyline completion in there, because apparently its all the rage to leave ultra-high level stuff for completion after you've beaten the game. I'm undecided as to if I'm a fan of that or not.

Ok....so ultimately, this game "saved" the first Final Fantasy XIII. For me, the first game was fun, but it wasn't awsome or anything. And if I was going to rate all the FF games, it would be near the bottom. However with the sequal game in tow, I would put the bundle of them much higher on the list.

Because the world is essentially the same one from the first game, they didn't have to re-create too much. But with the addition of making the player work through different time periods, it added much more then I originally thought it would. I was especially pleased about the rain effects.

The jumping around in time to solve different quests. That was fun. I did like that. The time-distortion puzzles...those were a nice, refreshing little bit of game. I liked that. Getting all the fragments and such (for quest completion, notable storyline stuff) was great. I wish there wouldn't have been five of those fragments in the game-level. I found the racing of the chocobo somewhat irritating.

All in all, I thought the game was pretty good. It was beautiful looking. Game play was improved. The music was still so so. This is spoiler. Check out my reply-to-my-own-thread for the big spoiler which honestly left me shocked.

~Jeordam