Final Fantasy XIII-2

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a 2011 role-playing video game developed and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was released in 2011 in Japan and 2012 in North America and PAL regions, and was ported to Windows in 2014. XIII-2 is a direct sequel to the 2009 role-playing game Final Fantasy XIII and part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis subseries. It includes modified features from the previous game, including fast-paced combat and a customizable "Paradigm" system to control which abilities are used by the characters, and adds a new system that allows monsters to be captured and used in battle. The game's plot features a heavy time travel element, allowing the player to jump between different times at the same location or different places at the same time. Lightning, the protagonist of the original game, has disappeared into an unknown world. Her younger sister Serah Farron and Noel Kreiss journey through time in an attempt to find her.

Development of Final Fantasy XIII-2 began in early 2010 and lasted about one and a half years. The game was unveiled at the Square Enix 1st Production Department Premier in January 2011. Many of the key designers remained in their roles from the previous game, and developer tri-Ace was hired to help with the game's design, art, and programming. The development team wanted to exceed Final Fantasy XIII in every aspect while making the story's tone more dark and mysterious than the previous game. The game builds upon the Paradigm Shift battle system used in XIII and includes a less linear overall design.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 received critical acclaim in Japan and generally positive reviews from Western video game journalists. Though praised for its gameplay, lack of linearity, and graphics, the game's story was criticized as weak and confusing. The game was the fifth-best selling game of 2011 in Japan, and sold 3.1 million copies worldwide by January 2013. A sequel, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, was released in 2013 in Japan and 2014 worldwide.

The game was added to Xbox One backward compatibility along with its predecessor and sequel in November 2018. It is also Xbox One X Enhanced, allowing it to display in 4K Ultra HD. In November 2021, support for FPS Boost on Xbox Series X/S was added allowing it to run at 60 frames per second.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a role-playing video game sequel to Final Fantasy XIII. As in the previous game, the player controls their on-screen character through a third-person perspective to interact with people, objects, and enemies throughout the game. The player can also turn the camera around the characters, providing a 360° view. XIII-2 has a world rendered to scale relative to the characters; instead of a caricature of the character roaming around miniature terrain, as found in the earlier Final Fantasy games, every area is represented proportionally. The player navigates the world on foot or by chocobo, large flightless birds that appear regularly in the Final Fantasy series. The game world is divided into multiple regions and time periods. The player can visit a region in multiple time periods and multiple regions at the same time period. For example, the region of Oerba can be reached in the years 200 and 400 AF, while the Sunleth Waterscape and Augusta Tower regions can be visited in the year 300 AF. Some regions, because of plot points within the game, have alternate versions of themselves; for example, two versions of the Academia region in the same year can be accessed once the plot has made the second version available. Connecting all these regions is the Historia Crux, which the player can access at will. The game's regions are represented as a branching path instead of being accessed linearly. New regions can be unlocked via plot points or by acquiring optional special items and the player may transfer between unlocked regions at any point.

When accessing a previously visited region, the player appears in the location of their last visit. Upon acquiring items called seals, the player can revert regions to their previous statuses to play through them again; regions can be unsealed again at any time. Unlike in the predecessor, the game is automatically saved when the player enter the Historia Crux, as well as at key moments in the plot. The player may also manually save at any time. Instead of accessing stores at save points like in XIII, the player can purchase items from a character named Chocolina, who is found throughout the game. An in-game data log provides a bestiary and incidental information about the world of XIII-2. When talking to characters, the game sometimes begins the Live Trigger system, in which the player chooses their response from several options; these dialogue options are generally not repeatable. The game also occasionally features temporal rifts, in which the player must complete a puzzle to close the rift and continue the game.

Combat is almost identical to the previous game's version of the series' Active Time Battle (ATB) system, called the Command Synergy Battle system. Under this system, the player selects actions from the menus, such as Attack, Abilities, or Item, and queues them up in the ATB bar. Each action requires one or more slots on the ATB bar, which begins the game with three slots and can be increased over the game to six. The ATB bar continually fills with energy over time; the player can wait for the bar to fill up for the enqueued actions to be performed, or may empty the bar early to perform whatever actions have been charged. The player may also select an autobattle command, which fills the ATB slots with actions chosen automatically. Actions the characters can perform include close-range melee attacks, ranged magical attacks, and other magical actions that evoke healing or shielding abilities. Actions cannot be performed outside of combat, and the characters' health is fully restored after each fight.

As the player travels through an area, monsters can randomly appear. For a limited time after monsters appear, the player may attack them to gain a combat bonus; after this window expires, the monsters attack the player to begin a regular battle. When the battle begins, the screen transitions from the regular map to a separate battle screen. The player has the option of restarting a battle while in the middle of a fight. Three characters are used in combat—the two main characters and a monster. Monsters must be captured from battles before they can be used, and there are around 150 different monster types available to be collected. Captured monsters act just like the main characters, but can also perform a "feral link" attack that increases the chance of capturing another monster. Either of the two main characters can be selected as the one that the player has direct control over at any point; the other character and the monster are then controlled by the game's artificial intelligence (AI).