FFXIII-2

[vadre]

Spoiler: show

There's speculation Yule (the girl's english name apparently?) is Paddra Nsu-Yeul, who wrote one of the analects from XIII:

Ragnarok took wing; made to smite Cocoon, and thereby deliver us our everlasting peace. But Her Providence would not let it be.
The Goddess pitied the fools who so blindly bowed to Lindzei's will, and so She robbed Ragnarok of power, putting the l'Cie to an early crystal sleep, Focus yet incomplete.

-- Sermons of the seeress Paddra Nsu-Yeul

So she might've been about back when the war of transgression was about which, to be honest, isn't that surprising considering how many entities in XIII seem to have lasted that long

[Cichy]

Great trailer.
I guess Kaias is the new master of Soul Edge

[Ayn]

Somewhere in a facility, there’s machinery surrounding a room.
Yuru says, “Beyond death, encompass all memory of all time, he, Kais will definitely never die.”
In shock, Noel replies, “His body can’t die?!”

Guess Kaias's body isn't ready.

[Tyrath]

So Noel is Trunks from the future?

[Cichy]

So Noel is Trunks from the future?

lol exactly what I was thinking

[vadre]

He's certainly got the hair for it.

I'm not much of a fan of him, so the end of that trailer pleased me muchly.

[Odin'sLaw]

that's some terrible sycning there and is the main villain the voice of grimoire weiss? good voice actor looking forward to this game

[Gokulo]

that's some terrible sycning there

That's because it's actually the jp version of the game and english voices. They mentioned somewhere that of course the english version will be synced properly.

[Tyrath]

Yeah its the Grimoire. And a lotta other big anime/vg roles.

[Nevex]

New info from Famitsu: http://www.novacrystallis.com/?p=1660

Aside from the bit about FINAL FANTASY XIII-2′s disc space, Famitsu has even more information on the game.

The version of Hope seen in the TGS trailer is from 10 years after the end of FINAL FANTASY XIII. He is 24 years old, and the head of a scientific investigation group.
Caius, the game’s main villain, has an evil influence on both Valhalla and Serah’s world. In the Promise trailer, the black smoke emitting from Lightning is called “Chaos.”

FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 will have some intense scenes as well, although not on the same level as FINAL FANTASY Type-0. QTEs will be a big part of the game, but failing them doesn’t necessarily penalize you. Clearing them will net you at least something, however.

By far the greatest addition is party switching. In FINAL FANTASY XIII-2, you’ll be able to switch out party leaders in real time during battle. This also means that, when your party leader dies, you will no longer game over.

Other things of note, the silver-haired girl traveling with Caius is known as Yeul. Noel’s memories are vague because of a time paradox. The game will include Easy Mode, and changeable costumes visible in event scenes. Also, there will be no level cap on the Crystarium system this time.

[Gokulo]

Nice stuff

[Cichy]

The party leader thing is pretty awesome, it's one thing I wished was in XIII.

[Appie]

Besides Bartholomew (think that was his name) doing Death on my party leader in the final battle and thus making me restart the battle I haven't missed change party leader once. AI seemed set to especially spam your party leader with Death, that's why I hated it, cheap ass move. Of course could fix it somewhat with death resistance accessory, but ya :/

[Elcura]

Great news about party mechanics, MC death is retarded and I'm glad they realize this.

[Nevex]

Some more info from Andriasang: http://andriasang.com/comya1/

Time paradoxes are a central component of the game, says Toriyama. This is true of both gameplay and story. We already saw how time travel works into the gameplay a couple of weeks back.

On the story side, Lightning no longer exists in the world due to the effects of a time paradox. As detailed above, only Serah seems to have the memory of a world with Lightning. We'll find out why this is the case as the game's story progresses.

Time paradoxes affect different areas of the world in different ways. In the Bresha Ruins area, a time paradox has caused an enemy called Atlas to appear. The way you figure out how the paradoxes have affected each area is set up somewhat like a mystery.

The time paradoxes began happening at the ending of FFXIII. Because of this, you won't be able to going back in time to before that point.

Matsui's comments with the magazine are mostly about the game's monster raising component. They're placing a good amount of time on this area of the battle system.

The game will have rare monsters -- monsters that have a low encounter rate or are hard to capture, for instance. It seems that you won't be able to add giant monsters to your party, though.

Different monsters have different difficulties in terms of commands. Even if you fail at inputting a command, the monsters will still attack, although succeeding with a command will result in greater damage.

XIII-2 has the concept of "Blood Damage." Each time you're hit with blood damage, you lose a portion of your max HP. In the first FFXIII, if you had a healer in your party you could recover from damage without trouble. But in XIII-2, you can't recover from blood damage, so you have to defeat enemies quickly.

Toriyama says that the staff is currently making adjustments to areas that they feel may be too hard. However, the final version has an easy mode, and you can switch to it whenever you want.

In addition to taking direct control, you can also assign attack AI routines, selecting from "normal," "concentrated" an "scattered." This is part of the new "Paradigm Tune" system.

[Hyan]

The game will have rare monsters -- monsters that have a low encounter rate or are hard to capture, for instance.

Entei, Raikou, Suicune :Q_

[Nevex]

About being unable to add giant monsters to the party, well I wasn't certainly expecting to be able to capture something like an Admantoise or Ochu. Behemoths are good enough though.

[Burningthought]

I guess the blood damage thing is why they made the HP bars look ugly.

[ArchDizzle]

Party leader change, AI patterns, and rare NM esque monsters are great news as well as areas being harder. Costume/armor changing as well, damn someone at SE was listening.

[Kurokikaze]

Yo yo yo... SE was reading some forums after FFXIII was released and they took that criticism seriously. Holy shit.

AI patterns blew mind. That was always my biggest complaint when fighting big bosses. I'm using Lighting or Fang but then Vanille is casting and standing right next to me soaking up damage when she shouldn't have to. Definitely good news that you can change that.

No MC death. Fuck yeah.

Rare NMS? Fuck yeah.

Costumes/armor changing appearance? Fuck yeah.

Day 1? You bet. Hope has been restored as far as I'm concerned. As long as the story isn't all lovey-dovey or full of cliches then I'm all over this game.