Video Game / Final Fantasy XIII-2

Spoilers for Final Fantasy XIII will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

Lightning (left) Can Do Anything... but that doesn't mean Serah (right) isn't gonna try her part.

Time and Memory, frozen in crystal...

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a direct sequel to the 13th game in the baby-blendingly popular Final Fantasy series and third entry of the Fabula Nova Crystallis: Final Fantasy sub-series, and also the fifth title in the series to be a direct sequel to a main series title. The game was teased on January 27, 2011 at the Square Enix 1st Production Department Premier Conference, and was subsequently released on December 15th, 2011 in Japan, January 31st, 2012 in North America, and February 3rd, 2012 in Europe. Like its predecessor, it is for both the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. The game was also ported to the PC on December 11, 2014.

Three years after the end of Final Fantasy XIII, the residents of Cocoon are attempting to rebuild their lives following the loss of the Cocoon fal'Cie. Lightning is missing, assumed to have sacrificed herself in order to stop Cocoon from falling and killing everyone inside. Only one person believes otherwise: Serah Farron, who swears that her sister emerged alive but disappeared into thin air a moment later.

When a mysterious young man called Noel Kreiss drops into Serah's life and promises to take her to Lightning, Serah eagerly accepts this opportunity to discover the truth. Noel reveals that he is a Time Traveller, the last survivor of a ruined future sent to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. Using the Historia Crux gates to travel between the past, present and future of Gran Pulse and Cocoon, Serah and Noel must discover the source of the mysterious distortions that are tearing apart the walls between timelines, track down Lightning and confront an immortal antagonist from Noel's world.

The game's story continues in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII.

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This game has examples of:

Tropes #-D

• 100% Completion: The game requires you to completely fill out every map and monster^note You only need to kill each monster once, not Librascope them to completion. and obtain all of the Fragments in order to view the Secret Ending. However, in order to do this, you will need to obtain several of the hidden monsters that would help against the harder optional encounters of the game.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Part of the Bresha Ruins area is underground and in the sewers.
• Action Commands:
  • During battle, you'll be asked to input commands via the Cinematic Action system, which allows you to do things like climb on enemies, and other cinematic stuff. Mostly, they do superficial stuff, like buffing the party, staggering the boss or just to take it down in a flashy way. Doing the last one will get you an adornment for each boss; doing them all will get you an achievement.
  • Monster allies' Feral Links require the input of commands in order to increase the synchronization, which increases the damage and the chance of obtaining the monster killed by the Feral Link. Support Feral Links on the other hand don't have any commands.
• An Adventurer Is You:
  • The same roles make a return from the original game - Commando, Ravager, Sentinel, Synergist, Saboteur & Medic. The two main characters start with the first three and can learn the rest as a bonus whenever their crystarium expands. Captured monsters have a fixed role, though you can have up to three of them in your party switching out as needed.
  • Lightning's DLC, Requiem of the Goddess, gives her six roles which roughly correspond to the roles Serah and Noel get. Paladin is the Commando, Knight is the Sentinel, Sorcerer is the Saboteur, and Conjurer is the Synergist. She does not get a role corresponding to the Medic, instead having two roles which act as Ravagers, the Shaman which specializes in physical attacks with wind properties and the Mage which uses the standard Thunder spells.
• And the Adventure Continues: Paradox Ending 5 "The Future is Hope" shows Serah riding off into a time vortex with Snow to beat the stuffing out of Caius in the future.
• After-Combat Recovery: Your characters are healed after every battle, which is carried over from the first game.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The A.I. of Augusta Tower did not like the idea of the Academy limiting its power, so it killed off the Academy higher-ups and took control of the tower and Academia. Its self-defense system for Academia City involves turning the citizens into Cie'th and sending them in droves to attack intruders. Its madness would later form into Academia 400AF, a Bad Future where said AI controls the entire city.
• All There in the Manual:
  • The Datalog system returns, although the main storyline is easier to grasp than XIII. Every ending (except the secret ending scene) also grants a fragment that gives little tidbits of information, expanding on the information granted therein, as well as many fragments dropped from bosses and certain story events, including some surprising ones. For example, the Graviton cores are actually a temporal Message in a Bottle from Snow to Serah.
  • In a more meta sense, the final datalog entry granted from the final bonus fight of XIII, "Fabula Nova Crystallis", can be interpreted as spelling out XIII-2's plot in a very general sense.
• Alternate Universe: Yaschas Massif and Academia have alternate timelines that appear as a result of solving paradoxes in other locations, and they are marked with an X in the year name. (Ex. 01X AF) You can still go back to the original version of the area, though.
• Always Save the Girl:
  • Caius' stated goal is to find a way to prevent Yeul from her fate of dying and reincarnating every few years, something she has done for millennia, with him standing by her side the entire time. His solution is to directly cause a Time Crash and destroy time, thus cutting off the source of her shortened lifespan.
  • Noel believes in this. His track record isn't very good though.
• Ambiguous Robots: Some of the monsters that look and act organic are upgraded with items like bolts and chips. These are usually the same monsters that were identified as biological weapons in the first game.
• Ambiguous Time Period: Several time periods you visit in Final Fantasy XIII-2 are labeled simply "??? AF" in the Historia Crux, meaning these episodes take place After the Fall but how many years after is unclear.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: You play as Sazh during the Heads Or Tails DLC.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Well, you aren't rewarded with clothes, but you can get them as downloadable content. The various monster adornments could also count as this in some cases. Most of these are earned by things such as Live Trigger Rewards, Cinematic Action Bonuses, or throwing Mog in obscure areas.
• Animal-Eared Headband: Half the attendants of Serendipity wear cat ear bands, tails, and cat paw gloves. The other half are Palette Swaps of Chocolina and dressed up like blue chocobos.
• Another Side, Another Story: There are DLC packs where you can play a story segment as Sazh, Lightning, or Snow, and then obtain them as a party member "monster" when you complete it.
• Anti-Frustration Features: A number of minor features from the original have been changed/removed for ease of use. Characters striking a pose in-battle whenever you shift paradigms still happens, but the first shift of a fight no longer involves a one-by-one sequence. The weapon upgrade system is largely eliminated, and those that still use it (DLC weapons mainly) have it vastly simplified. The amount of CP needed to upgrade the various Roles is reduced considerably, with general CP intake increased. You can switch party leaders between Noel and Serah at any time and if one dies, you'll automatically switch to the other. The rate at which the ATB charges is also increased, meaning faster combat overall. You earn gil directly from enemies, instead of only occasionally receiving sellable items from them as in the original.
• Anyone Can Die: To where it becomes extremely dark. Noel's backstory is that absolutely everyone can, and has, died. He was the last human ever to be born, and so he's jumping around the timeline trying to prevent his backstory from happening.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit/Lazy Backup: No matter how many monsters you've captured, only one can fight in battle at a time and only three can be placed in your Paradigm Pack and used in battle. If that monster dies, all monsters in your Paradigm Pack are dead and must be revived. Thankfully it also works in reverse and just reviving one of the monsters revives all 3: the same applies to healing^note This works as a percentage of health. For example, if one monster has 35 percent of health left, all three in the pack have 35 percent as well. This becomes useful when you want to heal a Sentinel and replace it with a low-HP monster. and buffing as well.
• Arc Number: 13, natch.
  • Although it doesn't appear story-wise as often as in the previous game, the Thirteenth Ark appears towards the end of the game. This means that it's now also an Ark Number.
  • Almost all DLC monsters have exactly 12 Crystarium nodes, which means that they max out at, you guessed it, level 13.
  • Snow also says he's going to explore the "13 different ages" in one of the paradox endings.
  • The world of XIII had 13-hour days prior to Ragnarok, and it's reflected in several clock motifs in the game: Valhalla has a massive clock strike 13 in the opening, the hardest Hands of Time clock faces have 13 numbers on them, and the face of the clock in one of the card games in Sazh's DLC goes up to 13.
  • After completing the Fragment quests in Augusta Tower 200AF, you are awarded with the key to floor 13.
  • Including the Paradox Scope battles and the Requiem Of The Goddess DLC, Caius Ballad and his Chaos/Jet Bahamut forms are fought 13 times, the most boss battles of any Final Fantasy boss ever.
  • In the original Final Fantasy XIII, a five-star battle rating for a standard battle was 13,000. In Final Fantasy XIII-2, it's 15,000 (13,000 + 2,000, XIII-2.)
• Arc Words: "A future I could not protect..."; also "Time and memory, frozen in crystal."
• Ascended Extra:
  • Serah becomes this, after spending the first game in crystal stasis.
  • Lieutenant Amodar (who only appeared in one scene) from the first game; now he's got a duplicate in 4XX AF running a quiz minigame, and appears as DLC for a fight in the Coliseum.
  • In XIII, Zenobia of the Undying was the victim of a Bait-and-Switch Boss, being shanked by a Tonberry before her battle started. This time, she appears as the boss of Academia 400AF.
• Ascended Fridge Horror: How to create a Dungeon Town. Academia 400AF has Proto fal'Cie Adam transforming the population into Cie'th.
• Ascended Meme: The below-mentioned "LIMIT BREAK!" is not the original title. The Japanese version had the title roughly translating to "Breaking the Limits!", but the English fandom instead changed the title, and it circulated across the Internet as an unofficial title. When the OST was released in English, the title in the official listing was "Limit Break!".
• Attack Its Weak Point: Returning from the previous entry of course.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever:
  • Atlas. Bonus points for being a Reality Warper.
  • One of The Undying is located within Academia 400AF. It can step on you.
  • Long Gui is back. It can step on you.
  • Early in the game, you come face-to-faces with Royal Ripeness, a gargantuan, 100-foot-tall tomato homunculus. The fight ends before you beat him the first time (you're meant to time-travel to figure out how to keep him from getting so powerful); if you try again and beat him, you get a Bad Future.
• Audible Sharpness: Swinging your sword on the map screen results in a distinctive "sharp sword" sound.
• Autosave: The game autosaves before key events like bosses.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The game has three sets of Infinity +1 Weapons, and the easiest pair to get also qualifies as this trope. The Strength and Magic stats of the Odinblade and Odinbolt depend on how many Fragments you have, so when you first get them, they might range from decent for someone who's been doing sidequesting to terrible for someone who's been on a Minimalist Run. It gets progressively stronger as you get closer to 100% Completion, and by the time it's better than the other two pairs in raw stats, you have everything completed (except maybe the toughest fights in the Coliseum DLC). The other two pairs of Infinity +1 Weapons are acquired by defeating specific, individual enemies on the Archylte Steppe and then making trades with Chocolina; one set comes with ATB Gauge +1 like the ultimate weapons from XIII, the other is better than the non-maxed Odin weapons, and both of them are capable of synthesizing passive abilities. In short: the Odin weapons are good, but they're not the best.
  • Twilight Odin zig-zags this. His stats when maxed out are on par with those of the strongest DLC monsters, with a full 6 ATB segments, very good Strength, and a bigger HP gauge than many Sentinels. Unfortunately, his Magic is subpar and his casting speed is slow, compounded by the fact that he can't Attack airborne targets, and he's very expensive to get maxed out. His Attack animation is a four-hit string which is slower than most other monsters', which means he can't take down enemies quickly, but he does serve well in prolonging enemy stagger gauges. His nature as an Eidolon means that he can't be interrupted, his Blitz is much faster than his Attack, and his Feral Link is one of only two to sync at 999% (and the other is DLC), making him essential for recruiting small-chance monsters. Ultimately, whether he's Awesome or Impractical depends on the individual player and what they need.
• Bad Future: Noel has come back in time to prevent this from happening. Unfortunately, preventing his specific bad future ends up leading into a worse future as detailed in Lightning Returns. Most of the Paradox Endings also lead to this.
• The Bad Guy Wins:
  • Caius is dead, but Etro dies with him, causing Valhalla's energies to overflow into Gran Pulse, completely transforming the world and turning it into a timeless realm, which is exactly what Caius wanted.
  • Several of the Paradox Endings lead to this, as many of them end up with Noel and Serah being incapacitated in some way, and trapped for good, so no one can still stand up against Caius. One of them is Played for Laughs, though, and others end with the implication that Noel and Serah can make their way back.
• Bathos:
  • Mog provides levity in many serious scenes by being poked or comically shaking his wand in the background.
  • The player can create this by having monsters with ridiculous accessories on during serious boss fights.
  • The "funny" answers to some of the Live Trigger events can make Serah seem like some kind of fool. At one point you can have her ask Noel how much he thinks a time-warping artefact would sell for, right after a mid-game boss fight with the Big Bad.
• Battle Couple: At one point in the game, you fight Caius with only Serah and one of your Mons. This trope comes into play when that Mon is Snow, her fiancé, assuming that you have bought the DLC featuring him and unlocked his crystal.
• The Beastmaster: Serah and Lightning have the ability to tame monsters and have them fight with them. Of course, some monsters cannot be tamed.
  • Caius has an army of monsters to fight for him in the opening cutscene, but he never makes use of this power again (probably because he doesn't need to).
• Beef Gate:
  • In order to unlock the gate in the Archylte Steppe to reach the Vile Peaks, you'll have to defeat three Gigantaurs (one at a time, not all at once), which are very powerful the first time you visit the location.
  • A near-literal one can be found in Academia 400 AF. While you're following Caius, the path you're not supposed to take is blocked off by a large Undying. You know, the Cie'th that were optional bosses in the original game? At this point, your attacks will barely make a dent in it even when Staggered, and all its attacks one-shot you. The game is reminding you to Continue Your Mission, Dammit!.
  • Long Gui is one if you decide to abandon all common sense and fight it instead of scaring it off with thunder like you're supposed to.
  • His Royal Ripeness, as well as Atlas, before you find a way to weaken them.
• Betting Mini-Game: You can play slots and chocobo racing (and in DLC, cards) in Serendipity and bet coins.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Serah is very nice and gentle, but if you don't do your homework, cause mischief, or doom humanity, you will be in for quite the scolding! Which is also the case in one of the optional mission areas.
  "Meanie Miss Farron! Meanie Miss Farron!"
• BFS: Caius' sword is about as big as he is. He can still swing it pretty fast.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Hope when you first meet him.
  • Snow has one in one of the Paradox Endings: In Academia 4XX AF, Snow arrives with the "time police" to arrest Alyssa for conspiring with Caius. After informing Hope that he will be assassinated in three days, he invites Serah to come with him on his journey to defeat all the different Caiuses spread across the timeline. Serah happily agrees, and the two set off on their own adventure.
  • Fang and Vanille pull Serah out of New Bodhum Year Unknown.
  • Serah and Noel in the Paradox Ending at Archylte Steppe.
• Big "NO!": Noel yells a big one when Serah has another vision that effectively kills her. While Square Enix continues to play inappropriate music.
• Big Sleep: Yeul (multiple times). Also, Dies Wide Open is narrowly averted and becomes this when Serah dies.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • All Paradox Endings except #3 (the Flan one) and #5 (Alyssa's secret). The canon endings are listed under Downer Ending.
  • Lightning's Episode and its effect on the canon ending. Sure, the world is still enveloped in chaos, Serah is still dead, and Lightning is crystallized, but there's hope: Lightning reveals she will reawaken one day, and she and Serah will meet again one day.
• The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In: Lightning's gunblade which she then uses as a Stepping-Stone Sword to swing herself into the fight. An obvious Shout-Out to her base character.
• Blackout Basement: Yaschas Massif 10AF is under an eternal "eclipse" due to a paradox bringing the global eclipse of the sun from after Cocoon's fall (in Noel's timeline).
• Bleak Level: A Dying World 700 AF, New Bodhum 700 AF, and Valhalla. Also, by proxy, the Void Beyond.
• Blessed with Suck:
  • The Eyes of Etro. Leaving aside the fact that this "gift" is indirectly responsible for Caius' Rage Against the Heavens, let's focus on Serah. At no point does Serah gain a benefit from the Eyes of Etro; she only has one vision of the future in the entire game that helps her in some way or allows her to solve a problem that she wouldn't be able to otherwise (rescuing Snow before the giant flan flattens him). Instead, she only suffers the negative side-effects and eventually dies from them. It's also the most useless Fragment Ability in the game, allowing you to slightly adjust the camera angle during in-game cutscenes.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: If you pick the odd or funny answers during Live Triggers, Serah becomes the boke and Noel is the tsukkomi.
• Booby Trap: The artefact given to Serah and Noel by Alyssa in Academia 4XX.
• Book Ends: The tutorial and final boss fights are against Caius and his Chaos Bahamut form in Valhalla.
  • In the ending of Final Fantasy XIII, Vanille and Fang go into crystal stasis to stop Cocoon from crashing into Gran Pulse. In the ending of XIII-2, Lightning goes into crystal stasis to preserve the memory of Serah, and ride out the storm of the Time Crash that occurs.
  • The tutorial battle and the Lightning DLC battle have you playing as Lightning alone.
  • This was how the collector's edition was made: the main box is a literal book binder. The front (in Japanese reading, if you're wondering) is Caius and the back is Lightning.
• Boring, but Practical: The most popular monsters are Bunkerbeast and Flanitor, thanks to their relative ease of use. Next to them are Cait Sith and Nekton, because you can get them right when the game introduces monster capturing and are usable even at the endgame.
• Boss-Altering Consequence:
  • Using the Paradox Scope will force you to face harder versions of bosses than you normally would and unlock "Paradox Endings," non-canon alternate endings.
  • Normally, you are supposed to use a device to weaken Atlas before fighting him. However, if you fight him head on, he will be a lot stronger and defeating him in this state will lead to the Paradox ending, "A Giant Mistake."
  • If you fight the Royal Ripeness a second time without resolving the Paradox affecting Sunleth Waterscape, it will have much higher stats than normal and defeating it will lead to the Paradox Ending, "Mog's Marvellous Flan Plan."
• Boss in Mook Clothing:
  • The Proto-Behemoth in its first form has Strength and Magic of 1520, and these double in its second form. By way of comparison, the Final Boss has Strength of 2027 and Magic of 760. The Proto-Behemoth does not have high HP for a late game enemy, but good luck staying alive long enough to chop it down.
  • Tonberry: a small fishy-looking thing with a huge pool of hit points and a very stabby knife.
  • When you first go to Yaschas Massif and people tell you not to get into fights with behemoths in the pitch-black areas, they're not kidding. It is possible to win the fights, but it's not easy, and not exactly super-rewarding either (although you get a quest later, and if you capture one its a bit of a Disk One Nuke).
• Boss Rush: The ending consists of multiple fights against Caius, in different forms. In order, Chaos Bahamut (that one you saw in the opening fight), Caius himself three times in a row plus a fakeout, and the Winged Chaos - Jet Bahamut, Garnet Bahamut, and Amber Bahamut - as the Final Boss. Jet Bahamut has over 1 million HP, and the end total for all of these combined is around 2 million. Oh, and the other two Bahamuts prevent Jet from taking any damage or being targeted, and Jet can, upon completion of a countdown, kill any character not in Sentinel form.
• Bragging Rights Reward: The Odinblade and Odinbolt don't achieve their full potential until you've acquired every fragment, at which point they receive a large jump in damage output. If you don't have the Coliseum DLC, this trope is the result.
• Break Meter: The same mechanic as the first game makes a return.
• Brick Joke:
  • An Undying Cie'th was killed by a Tonberry in XIII. The same one shows up in XIII-2 as a boss in Episode 4.
  • The mirror. It played no role, and was there as a prop. That same mirror is a euphemism for a parallel dream world where all desires could come true. It was further evidence that everything was bleeding into each other, and where you got your first artefact.
• Bridal Carry: Caius to Yeul during the opening credits, which was also a familiar sight to some players.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu:
  • You can kill Caius by stabbing his heart. Which was also the heart of the Goddess of Time. Which causes time itself to collapse and the world to end. Which was the villain's objective all along. Oops.
  • Also in half of the Paradox Endings. Just to list: if you kill Atlas, a war erupts and you're killed in it; if you kill the giant Flan, it takes over the world; if you kill the Proto fal'Cie with the Paradox Scope activated, Serah, Noel and Mog are captured by it and have machine copies made of them; if Serah kills Caius with the Paradox Scope activated in the Void Beyond, time ends.
• Broken Bridge: The time gates themselves serve this purpose, only opening up the next area once you've advanced the plot enough to uncover the various Artefacts. There are also numerous other examples in the form of barricades, fallen rubble, time distortions, and so on. There's even two Broken Bridges that are almost literally broken bridges - they're bridges phased out of spacetime that you can't cross until you get Mog's improved search ability.
• But Thou Must!: The very final Cinematic Action scene. The resulting cutscene is the exact same, regardless of which option you pick.
  • Any of the choices leading to a Paradox Ending, especially if the game puts you right where you left off after that cutscene.
• Butt-Monkey: Mog. There are parts of the game where advancing the plot involves picking the little guy up and tossing him.
• The Cameo: Gilgamesh and Omega from Final Fantasy V, Ultros and Typhon from Final Fantasy VI, and PuPu from Final Fantasy VIII are available as DLC Optional Bosses and can be recruited after being defeated.
• Cartography Sidequest: An NPC will reward you for filling in most area maps 100%. Doing so is sometimes difficult.
• Casting Gag:
  • The voice actress for Mog in both Japanese and English (Sumire Morohoshi and Ariel Winter, respectively) shares the voice for characters in other Square Enix works: Marlene Wallace and young Kairi, who are also cute, small characters.
  • Captain Cryptic is voiced by Dave Wittenberg (aka, Kefka Palazzo) in the English version, which makes his quiz question regarding Terra Branford extremely hilarious with that knowledge.
• Chained by Fashion:
  • Gogmagog and its palette swap, which are described as charms and seals placed upon it.
  • The giant monster you ride in the Sunleth Waterscape has chains on its head for some reason.
• Character Customization: This game introduces large nodes in the Crystarium, which will give you a stat bonus depending on what role you leveled up. (Ex. Commando raises Attack, Medic raises Health, etc.) This lets you decide whether Serah and Noel will become better spellcasters or physical attackers.
• Chekhov's Skill: Serah is a school teacher, and quite a strict one at that, which is mentioned in passing early in the game. It certainly comes in handy in Sunleth Waterscape - 400 AF when she and Noel are forced to fight a Flan School...
• Chronoscope: The Oracle Drives serve as this, recording the visions that the Seeresses see.
• Cliffhanger: The game ends on a "To Be Continued..." note with Serah and Etro dead, Lightning self-crystallized (according to interviews, this is to save Serah and maintain Etro's presence), and Hope and Noel trapped at ground zero of a successful Time Crash and Class Z Apocalypse How moment. It is continued by Lightning's DLC episode, which itself is followed by Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
  • Lightning's Episode introduces another cliffhanger: Lightning mentions she will reawaken one day, opening new questions about what will happen to her as well. If you get the "secret ending" after the credits of this episode (by 5-staring the second fight), you see her wake up in the distant future... which is destroyed.
• Clock Roaches: Several monsters (the crystal-insect ones) are direct manifestations of paradox.
• Collection Sidequest: The Fragments, of which there are 160. Some are easier to get than others, naturally.
  • Some of the fragments are actually rewards from collection sidequests themselves, like having fully explored every map or having defeated every monster.
• Color-Coded Characters:
  • The various roles are color coded, so you can tell at a glance which character or mon has which. They even color the nodes in the Crystarium when you level up the role.
  • Several of the time labyrinth puzzles use color coding to make the gameplay more obvious. Clock puzzles color code the numbers so you can tell at a glance which number is which. Crystal constellation puzzles color code nodes that can be linked. And falling platform puzzles have red and white platforms to tell you which can be crossed once and which twice.
  • The three stats are color-coded, to make it easier to tell which one gained a bonus when you advance in the Crystarium. Hit points are green, attack is red, and magic power is purple.
  • Of course, we have Sera and Noel, Pink Girl, Blue Boy.
• Color Wash: The Archylte Steppe is remarkably brown when you first reach it. This changes when you gain access to the weather control machine.
• Colossus Climb: Noel does this via Action Commands. He runs up Atlas's visible arm and takes a flying swing at its (invisible) head.
• Completion Meter: The game shows a rundown of memory fragments by type and by location, as well as the overall count. Moreover, Historia Crux shows how many Time Gates are available in each location and how many have already been opened; and the map screen shows how much of the current location you have visited.
• The Computer Is Your Friend:
  • Future humanity is secretly ruled by an AI.
  • The Paradox Ending at Augusta Tower has the supercomputer kidnap Serah, Noel, and Mog, brainwash them, and turn them into weapons.
• Continuity Nod: Near the beginning of the last game, when the heroes are turned into l'Cie, a short Deliberately Monochrome cinematic showed Ragnarok atop Cocoon as the glimpse of a Focus. In this game, the same clip is shown as part of a prophecy recorded in an Oracle Drive.
• Cool Sword:
  • Caius' sword looks amazing. It's huge, improbably shaped, and purple. With a glowing red eye.
  • Lightning's new sword doesn't look too bad either. They gave it a more medieval fantasy look to match her new armor.
  • Noel has a large sword that doubles as a sheath for a smaller one. It's very ornate and can also be transformed into a spear when necessary.
  • Serah's weapon is actually Mog, who can also find objects that are lost in Paradoxes. Even when Serah loses Mog (kinda), her weapon turns translucent. It also switches between a bow and a sword depending on the distance in combat.
• Creature-Breeding Mechanic: The game lets the players infuse one of their summoned creatures (which fill out the third party slot in battles) with another. This destroys the latter but transfers some of its special abilities to the former, effectively creating a stronger breed.
• Credits Medley: The credits theme "Closing Credits" is a medley of "Caius's Theme," "Paradox," "Noel's Theme," "Future/Serah's Theme" and "Yeul's Theme."
• Crutch Character: Most monsters that are "early peakers". They have fantastic growth and can carry you through a chapter or two of the game, but since they're capped at level 20, they'll soon get outpaced by increasingly stronger enemies and better monsters.
• Cursed with Awesome: The Heart of Chaos. It allows the user to have power of chaos itself and Immortality. Caius has it as a gift from Etro herself as being the sole Guardian of Yeul, and only the person who kills him can take it.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: In a moment similar to the original, The Royal Ripeness is blasted and stunned for several seconds by massive fire-ball spells... from Noel, who doesn't begin with a Fire spell, and only learns it a quarter into his Ravager role. ^note  However, as we later see, Noel was strong/skilled enough to take on a Behemoth solo give-or-take some effort, which would require some development in all roles at the least.
  • Especially since in the actual gameplay fight, the Royal Ripeness absorbs fire. Yet even in-fight Noel uses fire spells to blast it's face during the cinematic finish, with regular damage indicators and everything.
• A Day in the Limelight: The three DLC story packs for Snow, Sazh, and Lightning.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • In this game, spells are ordered in the battle menu by power level (so first all the normal spells, then the '-ra's, then the '-ga's) as opposed to the original XIII's ordering by element. (Fire, Fira, Firaga, etc.) For those who played the first game a lot, this can take some getting used to.
  • On a similar note, many enemies from the first game return, but most of their weaknesses have been changed.
  • In the previous game, the in-game commands were Auto Battle, Abilities, TP Abilities and Item, in that order. TP Abilities are gone in this game, items are now the third slot and the last slot is the Change Leader option. Coming from the first game, it can happen easily that you end up switching your leader when you actually just wanted to use an item.
• Darker and Edgier: The main story is a good bit darker compared to its predecessor, which wasn't exactly cheerful itself.
• Darkest Hour: This occurs multiple times in the game
  • Noel's backstory, as shown in his dream world. Everyone except him, Yeul and Caius have died off. Caius wants Noel to kill him, and when its clear that Noel can't accomplish this, Caius leaves for Valhalla to go and try to kill Etro, leaving Noel and Yeul as the only ones left on Gran Pulse. Shortly after, Yeul dies from her visions, leaving Noel to wander the land searching for a way to Valhalla. Then you know the rest.
  • Most of Episode 5. Serah is lost in the Void Beyond and runs into Caius. After a Curb-Stomp Battle, Caius traps her in a dream world, where all her dreams can come true. Noel is trapped in one of these as well, thanks to Caius. After wandering around her dream world for awhile, Serah starts to panic and finds fake Lightning, who tries to convince her to stay there forever. Serah is dangerously close to giving into Lightning...
  • The ending! Caius had been vanquished, the paradoxes were resolving, Fang and Vanille were saved before the old Cocoon fell, the new Cocoon took off and then... Serah has one last vision and dies, Lightning crystallized and stays that way for centuries, Vanille and Fang are still in crystal stasis, and Snow is somewhere outside of the timeline. Meanwhile, Noel and Hope are smack dab in the middle of a Time Crash caused by Noel falling for Caius's plan and inadvertently killing Etro.
• Death by Origin Story: The Yeul from the timeline where Noel was born, as shown in his dream world, which basically shows his whole origin story.
• Death of a Child:
  • In Acedemia 400 AF, some of the NPCs transformed into Cie'th are children. Heartrendingly, you can sometimes pass adult female NPCs and hear them begging their children not to leave them, or reassuring them that they're right there.
  • Yeul isn't exactly an infant, but she never lives to be older than fifteen. And she's constantly reincarnated.
  • One of the sidequests is from a young boy who was sucked into a temporal distortion and killed, and is unable to move on because he never accomplished anything.
• Decoy Protagonist: Most of the advertising suggests that Lightning is the central hero of the game, even though the true main character is her sister Serah.
• Degraded Boss: Some monsters have moved up or down between XIII and XIII-2.
  • Malebranche is basically Attacus from XIII, and while Attacus was considered a boss in XIII, Malebranche is a regular enemy here. Same goes for Tonberries, though they're a rare encounter.
  • There are some inversions as well: The Immortal and Ochus were regular, if strong and rare, enemies in the first game, but are unique Optional Bosses here.
• Demoted to Extra: The main party in Final Fantasy XIII, save for Hope, is affected by this. There are short DLC episodes for Lightning, Snow, and Sazh, which allow you to recruit them into your party.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: The Fragments Before novel reveals that once the truth about the events of the first game came to light, the remaining PSICOM soldiers were shunned from most of society. Many of these soldiers went off into the Pulse wilderness and ended up founding many of the settlements that are now on Pulse. It's also revealed that another reason they did so was because with the destruction of Cocoon, their one goal in life (to protect Cocoon) disappeared, so they went to look for dangerous monsters to fight, as training for war was all they had known and is the only real skill they have.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • The tutorial features Lightning fighting Chaos Bahamut in Valhalla, composing of two combat rounds and a string of Cinematic Actions. Caius' quote near the end of that segment changes depending on how well the player has fared on the Cinematic Actions.
  Caius: (high-end success) I must thank you. In these final moments, I have met my finest opponent.
  Caius: (middling fare) Is that all you have?
  Caius: (high-end failure) I have long since ceased to feel pain!
  • If you decide to go to Augusta Tower 200AF after going to its 300AF counterpart to get a keycard, Noel will remark that you already have the key.
  Noel: If the key we need is something that is in a different time period, don't we already have it?
  • It is possible to win the Lucky Coin Fragment in Serendipity while playing as Serah only (i.e. - when you get lost in the Void Beyond and Serah is alone without Noel.) If you do, Noel's comment in the cut-scene will be absent.
• Dialog During Gameplay: Few NPCs in the game are actually able to be talked to; the rest of the NPCs can be heard by walking by them.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Yeul to Caius and Noel multiple times; Serah to Noel in the ending.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • Completing Requiem of the Goddess unlocks Valkyrie Lightning for the Paradigm Pack. Lightning's Episode can be played the moment you have access to the Historia Crux, meaning you can unlock the second most powerful Commando in the game before you even get to the Bresha Ruins. Even though you can't level her up until Sunleth Waterscape at least ^*the first place with enemies that drop Crystal components, and they're not even certain without some modifiers, her Strength and Magic stats at her starting level are in the 600's so she can absolutely wreck any enemy you come across for most of the game.
  • If you manage to max level the Dragoon from Augusta Tower 200AF, you will be able to use it through the rest of the game, short of Superbosses. This is because it has ~600 Attack at a time you are at the 250s.
  • The Behemoths you're told to avoid in Yaschas Massif 010 AF. It is possible to beat one as long as you have a Saboteur, Sentinel and a Medic, and its recruit rate is decent enough to make capturing it on your first visit a possibility.
  • A lot of the monsters labeled with "Early Peaker" have a low max level and pretty high stats compared to other choices. However, most of them lose out in the long run.
  • If you manage to survive, you can get a Munchkin from Bresha Ruins 300AF quite early in the game. They have very high health and strength compared to most others, which can get even higher if use certain materials to level them up, and are "Early Peakers".
  • The DLC weapons are really useful up until you start to do sidequests near the endgame.
• Discount Card:
  • One of the Fragment Skills will reduce the price of items.
  • Played for funny when Serah, Noel, and Mog receive the "reward" for solving Bresha Ruins' paradox: a 10-year supply of toilet paper. And you get to keep it in your inventory!
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Walking around talking to NPCs in Academia 4XX AF, one little girl will say "Ah! You're a scary adult! Scary adults shouldn't talk to kids they don't know!"
• Doomed Hometown: Not a straight example, but New Bodhum, Serah's hometown, is absolutely destroyed in the future.
• Downer Ending: The final cut scene shows Lightning is petrified on Etro's throne, Serah dying in Noel's arms, Chaos engulfs the world, and it's all the heroes' fault. In their defense, Caius influenced events so that he would win no matter what. He had 2 plans, and if one failed, the other would definitely succeed anyway. Serah and Noel succeeded in stopping Caius' Plan A of using Cocoon's destruction to force the gate open. It's just too bad that his Plan B, them killing him, worked perfectly. The ending of Lightning's episode makes it more of a Bittersweet Ending. See that entry for more info.
• Dreaming of Things to Come:
  • Lightning and Serah both have seen Noel in a dream prior to meeting him.
  • It's eventually revealed that Serah has the power to see into the future just like Yeul. Also, like Yeul, this power drastically decreases her lifespan.
• Dream Land:
  • Serah winds up in one after Caius stabs her. Fake versions of Snow, Team NORA, and Lightning all show up. Fang and Vanille eventually help her out of it. One of the Paradox Endings can be obtained here if you tell the fake Lightning that you wish to stay with her, and Serah will live in her dream world forever and forget about Mog and Noel.
  • Lightning ends up in one also caused by Caius in her episode, and is forced to fight him before coming to.
• Duel Boss: Late in the game, Serah and Noel are temporarily separated and they both run into Caius. Serah averts this, as she fights him with a Mon on her side. Noel plays this trope straight and fights him one-on-one.
• Dungeon Shop: Chocolina sometimes sets up shop in dungeons, even right before the boss.

Tropes E-N

• Earn Your Happy Ending: Canonically subverted. Despite there being Multiple Endings, this game has more "It's a Wonderful Failure" endings than any other Square Enix game. There is only one perfectly happy ending, which is not canon.
• Eldritch Abomination: Gogmagog and the Undying Cie'th Raspatil.
• Elevator Action Sequence: In Augusta Tower 200AF, you're forced into several fights in a row while riding the elevator. All while going up one floor, which after the sequence, takes nothing more than a few seconds.
• Empathic Environment:
  • Bresha Ruins 005 AF starts out sunny. After Atlas begins his rampage across the ruins, it begins to rain. After defeating Atlas and stopping his rampage, the area becomes sunny again. Apparently, the environment cannot make up its mind.
  • It is always dark and raining in Academia 400 AF.
  • It's usually bright and sunny in New Bodhum. The two exceptions are during the intro, when monsters are attacking the town at night, and in the year 700 AF, when all humans have perished.
• Emperor Scientist: Since the Academy is more or less the government of the world, that makes the Director of the Academy, Hope, its leader.
• Endgame+: You obtain the Paradox Scope after beating the game, which, after getting it as a skill in Serendipity, will let you access the Paradox Endings that you couldn't access before. Some fragments can only be obtained after beating the game.
• Eternal English: One of the datalogs lampshades this by noting that the human language has not changed in over a thousand years, although curiously enough, Cocoon and Pulse use different alphabets. The datalog speculates that the reason for the unchanging language is because language was something that the fal'Cie gave humanity.
• Expy:
  • Atlas looks like (and has the same model of) a miniature Titan.
  • Noel himself is basically a gender-swapped Fang, which is lampshaded in a conversation between Snow, Serah, and Noel.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Caius and Lighting can see the entire timeline from Valhalla, and as discovered in the normal ending and pointed out in the secret ending (and implied in the Paradox endings, since they all pretty much have Serah and Noel unable to try and stop Caius anyway, leaving him unopposed), all timelines lead to Etro dying and Caius winning. The specifics differ but the end result is always the same... and Caius knew it. Lightning realising it sends her past the Despair Event Horizon and causes her to choose to crystallize herself to attempt to ride out the storm.
• Failure Knight: Caius and Noel to Yeul, which justifies Noel's protectiveness of Serah. Caius (eventually) succeeds in reviving Yeul while Noel fails to protect Serah.
• Fake Longevity:
  • Square seems to have gone out of its way to make getting the fragment from the slot machine the dullest, and most time consuming activity ever. Luckily, you can use the rubberband trick to have the game autoplay the slot machine until you get the fragment, and you can do something else in real life while waiting for that.
  • The whole process of getting all the Fragments for the sake of the Secret Ending is this, especially because the game is hellbent on you exploring every nook and cranny.
• Fanservice:
  • One of the members of the game's production team stated outright that Mog's presence in the game was intended as a form of fanservice, though this is one instance where it doesn't have anything to do with sex.
  • One of the DLC options is to have Serah spend most of the game (excluding certain cutscenes) in a pink bikini.
• Fashions Never Change: With one or two exceptions, fashion changes very little over the centuries you travel; Academia and military uniforms not at all.
• Fastball Special:
  • Odin to Lightning in the opening cinematics.
  • Snow to Noel when fighting the giant flan.
  • Noel throws Serah's sword (i.e. Mog) at the Proto Fal'cie Adam during a Cinematic Action sequence. Mog gets paralyzed from electrical shock for a few seconds afterwards.
• Feather Motif:
  • Lightning gains one to replace her rose motif in the first game.
  • When you buy the Arcus Chronica for Serah and the In Paradisum for Noel from Chocolina, white and black feathers appear respectively every time they attack an enemy.
• Fetch Quest: Roughly half the sidequests available are you running down an item or two for various NPCs. This usually involves something that has been sucked into a paradox and sent into another timeline, and therefore said NPCs simply aren't able to find it because unlike the playable characters, they can't travel through time.
• Final Boss, New Dimension: The last two bosses in the game are fought in Valhalla.
• Final Boss Preview: Caius is the first and last opponent fought in the game.
• Floating Continent:
  • Valhalla has a few surrounding the periphery. Most of them are destroyed in the battle with Caius.
  • The 13th Ark
  • Bhunivelze (aka New Cocoon) becomes this.
• Forced Transformation: Almost immediately their arrival in Academia 400 AF, the Proto Fal'Cie Adam takes notice of Serah and Noel and begins transforming the humans of the city en massed into monstrous C'ieth to fight them. As you continue through the city, this continues to happen before your eyes, save the few who are able to escape the Fal'Cie's eye. Solving the Paradox allows you to prevent this horrendous future by making it so that Adam was never constructed in the first place.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The "Worlds Collide" battle theme references several plot points. Interesting how they reference Atlas Shrugged.
    Worlds collide and people fade
    Seek gates through timelines, we've all prayed
    Let's fix the past
    Trade it now to see smiling faces
    This hope, Heart of Chaos cannot take
    Paradoxes must break, this is the path I must take
    My destiny may change your fate
    The pain my heart feels is my strength
  • For those who finished XIII's postgame, the datacore you get for the final bonus fight, "Fabula Nova Crystallis", definitely has parallels with the XIII-2 storyline... and hints about what may lie beyond "To Be Continued."
  • Similarly, the tenth Analect from FFXIII titled "The Menace Beyond", along with the "Mirror of Atropos" fragment from FFXIII-2, suggest that a final battle is due to take place in the Thirteenth Ark, which appears late in the game but is conspicuously irrelevant to the plot aside from giving Hope the idea to use Graviton Cores.
  • A lot is said in-game about how people think Lightning is crystallized inside Cocoon, even though the player is aware that's not the case. However, the very last shot of the normal ending is Lightning sitting on Etro's throne, crystallized. You'd normally dismiss it, but it's pretty brutal in hindsight...
  • Likewise, Lightning sitting in Etro's throne in one of the promotional posters◊.
• For Doom the Bell Tolls: In scenes where Lightning is snatched from time and again at the canon ending.
• Four Is Death: "Unseen Abyss" (also known as "Invisible Depths"), Caius' Final Boss theme, runs for 4 minutes and 44 seconds on the Soundtrack CD. This comes after you fight him three times plus a fakeout in his human form.
• From Bad to Worse: The ending goes from Serah dying to chaos engulfing the world to Lightening's crystalization. It's possibly the most bleak the Final Fantasy series has gotten, and that includes Final Fantasy VI, where Kefka destroyed an entire planet and someone attempted suicide on camera.
• The Future Will Be Better: In Serah's time of 5AF, humanity lives in tiny communities that eeke out a living while fighting off monsters. In every timeline after that, humans are doing better. 400AF is nightmarish but once the timeline is changed, a grand society has been developed where the greatest problem is slight boredom. Noel comes from a Bad Future but he went back in time to invoke this trope.
• Gameplay Grading: Like the last game, your battles are ranked from one to five stars. This is important since not only do higher ranks increase item drops (including monster crystals), but some achievements/trophies are only awarded for getting five stars on certain boss battles.
• Genre Blind: Mog, who sees Alyssa's (lengthy) Traitor Shot but doesn't say anything, presumably because he doesn't know what to make of it.
• Genre-Busting:
  • The soundtrack. Examples: LIMIT BREAK, Colliding Worlds, and Groovy Chocobo. The first two are a few of several tracks vocalized for the game, somewhat like Persona 3.
  • The game too, to an extent. Basically, Final Fantasy XIII and Chrono Trigger/Final Fantasy VIII hopped in a hot-pink convertible together and got in a hit-and-run accident with Pokémon and a Shin Megami Tensei game.
• Genre Shift:
  • In gameplay terms it's still an action RPG, but XIII-2's story is basically a 180 on the themes of the original - XIII leaned heavily into its sci-fi elements, while XIII-2 is more of a cosmic fantasy. In addition, the mythology has been completely turned on its head - the Fal'Cie were portrayed as the closest thing Cocoon had to gods and the story went to great lengths to show that they couldn't care less about humans, while XIII-2 almost completely drops them and instead gives us Etro, a Big Good who effectively gives her life to protect the protagonists of the first game.
  • Final Fantasy XIII had Lighter and Softer music with vibrant strings layered onto a common style most often associated with past Final Fantasy titles, which contrasts the "brighter future" theme akin to Final Fantasy X. This game is the exact opposite: Darker and Edgier soundtrack with strong emphasis on individual instruments optionally layered with a subtle rap-like voice-over, which contrasts the apparent theme of how relying on others is extremely helpful.
• Ghost Town: Oerba is still this, even after hundreds of years. The game gives it a Hand Wave by explaining that Hope ordered the place to be preserved in honor of Vanille and Fang. Plus, the area is continuously under Paradox Effects, so going there is very dangerous for anyone other than Serah, Noel, Mog, and maybe Chocolina.
• A God I Am Not: In the prologue, during the aerial battle (if you can hear it over the sounds of battle), Noel asks if Lightning is a war goddess. "I never said I was a goddess" is her reply; essentially true, as while she's empowered by the goddess Etro, Lightning technically isn't one herself.
• The Gods Must Be Lazy: Etro is a very kind goddess but unfortunately she does not know her own limits and instead is too active. The happy ending in XIII was caused by an intervention and leads to this game's conflict. The Heart of Chaos and the Eyes of Etro were both gifts from her; the former powers the villain and the later kills the hero. She indirectly caused the majority of bad events to happen.
• Golden Ending: The Lightning DLC's own ending is considered to be this, since it expands on the game's own ending. Ultimately, however, nothing the player does — from completing the main story, to unlocking all of the secret endings, and even finishing the DLC mentioned above — can (canonically) stop Caius from winning. In the final secret ending, Caius even mocks the player for thinking that they could change this outcome.
• Gold–Silver–Copper Standard: One of the fragment items from the Bresha Ruins mentions that after the paradox wiped away everyone's debit card information, everyone switched to bartering using materials like silver and gems.
• Go Through Me: Not long into the game, New Bodhum is being attacked by a number of monsters and Serah isn't yet equipped to fight them. Noel Kreiss appears from the future, having been sent by Serah's sister Lightning and spots Serah being attacked.
  Noel: You want her? Then you're gonna have to go through me!
• Gotta Catch Them All: Of the optional variety. Like many Mons games, the monsters range from the very common to the extremely rare and from the exceptionally easy to catch to the frustratingly difficult, and they are spread out all over the game. Some fall into Guide Dang It! due to the fact that you need to know where to throw Mog. One fragment is obtained as a reward for having defeated every single enemy in the game at least once.
• Gory Discretion Shot: When Noel is Impaled with Extreme Prejudice by Caius.
• Grandfather Paradox: Who caused the AI humanity creates to turn against them and finish the Artificial Fal'cie? The Artificial Fal'cie, of course. Must have been inspired by Ultimecia.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Snow joins your group as a non-playable character in Sunleth Waterscape 300 AF.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • You most likely can't find all 160 Fragments without consulting a walkthrough at least once. The worst ones are either Fragments related to Paradox Endings, which already have their own Guide Dang It! moments, or the ones that are hidden on the map, and require searching everywhere and checking every nook and cranny to find.
  • The Clock Puzzle fragments in all time periods of Oerba are this as they can be frustrating and in some cases will constantly change giving you only one chance to solve some of the Clock Puzzles.
  • Nearly every fragment in Academia 4XX AF. Obtaining most of them involve answering a number of inane (and even some luck-based) questions in a row, tracking down Captain Cryptic with infrequent and vague clues from pedestrians, and filling the entire bestiary, which is itself a Guide Dang It!, especially monsters like Tezcatlipoca, a unique Woodwraith who spawns only in a single spot in Academia 500 AF, on the northeast platform close to the final boss fight. If you already fought Xolotl and Miquiztli at that spot instead, you have to reset the entire area and go all the way over there again.
  • You also wouldn't be able to find all Artefacts to open up the mostly-optional Gates.
  • The hidden monsters that require throwing Mog. Some of them make a little sense, but it's rather annoying to find out that one of the best Commando monsters in the game, Chichu, requires this.
  • If you want to collect all of the adornments in the game, be prepared to either throw Mog a lot (about 10 times at every possible place in the game), or consult a guide.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Whether or not you decide to kill Caius, he still destroys the world.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Lightning crystallizing during the ending is supposed to be her protecting Serah's will after she died. Some elements of Despair Event Horizon also come into play, as Lightning realized what Caius did.
  • Serah realizes towards the end of the game that trying to fight fate to save the future will shorten her lifespan and kill her. She decides to continue fighting, and does indeed die from the visions.
• The Hero Dies: Serah (and Etro) dies at the end.
• Hero of Another Story: The rest of the cast of XIII (Lightning, Sazh, Snow, and Hope) are not idle while you are off saving the timeline, and while they dip in and out of the story throughout the game, they remain mostly orbital storylines that we know little about. Their DLC packages explain more about what they've been up to.
• How We Got Here: Shown in the opening sequence in which Lightning is fighting against Caius in the city called Valhalla. The ending sequence has Valhalla being remade on Gran Pulse as per the death of Etro, with Chaos spreading across the land. Serah dies, Caius narrates, and Lightning is shown as a crystal. "A future I could not protect," indeed.
• Hub Level: The Historia Crux serves as a menu-screen version of this. Each node on the map marks a different era and location. To unlock other nodes, you must activate time gates within those locations.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Played with after completing the Bresha Ruins sub-story. Noel and Serah get all philosophical about how humans caused the paradox and Mog proclaims that humans are the foulest of all evils because who else would give them with a voucher for a year's supply of toilet paper as a reward for their hard work?
• Immortality Seeker: Played With. Caius is already immortal, he simply wants to find a way to stop Yeul from dying and being reincarnated over and over again and give her true immortality. How does he give Yeul a deathless life? By getting someone to stab him through the heart, killing Etro and transforming the world into Valhalla, a world where time no longer exists.
• Improbable Weapon User: Serah uses a MOOGLE as a weapon. Granted, though, it does change into an actual weapon.
  • Noel's sword is actually two swords attached to each other that can turn into a spear.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The Odinbolt and Odinblade for Serah and Noel, respectively, is this. However, the Strength and Magic stats rely on how many Fragments you have, so the trouble in obtaining this is not getting it, but rather powering it up into the most powerful weapons in the game.
• Infinity -1 Sword: Like its sister game, the strongest weapons in the game are not the best (in fact, the actual Infinity Plus One Swords only achieve their full potential once you have achieved 100% Completion, and thus have nothing to use them on), and battle strategies are improved by weapons that grant beneficial statuses or speed up the fill rate of the ATB gauge, for instance.
• Insurmountable Waist-High Fence: This becomes even more obvious from the first game, since characters can now freely jump, yet still can't jump over most fences.
  • The last level is a platforming level, and some of the platforms have these, so that you can't make certain jumps to get through the level faster. The silly thing is that some of the "fences" are about an inch tall...
  • For extra fun, when you ride a chocobo you can jump over obstacles you couldn't on foot, but the rest is as unsurmountable for a giant bird as it is for humans.
• Interface Spoiler: Whenever you load up the game, a brief Previously on… recap will play just to remind the player of the story so far & starting with "Final Fantasy XIII-2 - The story so far" said by one of the main characters chosen at random, including Fang & Vanille, which spoils their cameo towards the end of the game.
• Invincible Villain: Caius, who easily outpowers Serah and Noel for the entire game and eventually gets his way in the end.
• I Regret Nothing: Serah reaffirms several times that she'll continue fixing the timeline, full well knowing that it will kill her by the end. When she actually dies, her last words are a simple "Thank you.", and after her death, she appears to Lightning, who realizes then that Serah knew the consequences of her actions, and once again reaffirms that "[she has] no regrets... none at all."
• Ironic Echo: When you first arrive at Academia 400 AF, Proto fal'Cie Adam makes its introduction in this timeline by arriving in an airship modeled after Etro, complete with a slow-moving tendency and greenish flashing lights. It then proceeds to remain above The Academy in the front of the map for rest of time.
  • Serah's flashback of the ending of Final Fantasy XIII. "I swear to you, I will make her happy." "I believe you."
• Item Amplifier: One of the item combination effects is "Improved Potions", which increases the amount of health restored by potions.
  • Also an inherent bonus for the Medic role, which boosts healing regardless of source.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: Augusta Tower, which thankfully uses elevators...
• I Will Find You: Serah towards Lightning and, later on, Snow. Noel towards his Yeul, as he believes he will reunite with her in the future.
• I Will Wait for You:
  • Serah waits for Snow to return in New Bodhum at the beginning of the game.
  • At the start of the game, Lightning is locked in combat with Caius, and neither of them seem to be able to gain the upper hand over the other. When she sends Noel to go find Serah, the implication is that Lightning will be fighting Caius for the entire span of the game.
• I've Come Too Far: Serah is sent to a Lotus-Eater Machine by Caius Ballad. Once there, she is offered a choice by an illusion of her sister, Lightning, to stay with her there in that world. If the player accepts the choice, it results in a Paradox Ending, followed by being dumped back to the same scenario. Once the player finally has her refuse Lightning's offer, she narrates that she couldn't do it, that everyone else had given her hope and there was no way she could desert them.
• Joke Item: Mog positively quivers with excitement at the idea of scoring a huge amount of gil once the party resolves the paradox at the Bresha Ruins in 100 AF / 300 AF. The reward turns out to be a coupon good for ten years of free toilet paper, leading Mog to declare that the government is evil. The coupon becomes a key item in the inventory.
  • Most of the adornments. Almost any mechanical monster looks funny with a newsboy hat on.
• Jerkass God: proto Fal'Cie Adam is this towards Mog sometime after it enables a stable time-loop where it always creates itself while they are both in the Void Beyond calling Mog a "useless stuffed toy".
• Jumped at the Call: After losing Lightning, then Snow, and hearing nothing from the latter for two years, all it takes is a small-scale monster invasion and Noel's word to send Serah traipsing across time and space in search of her sister.
• Karma Houdini: Alyssa, except in one Paradox Ending where Snow reveals that she's working with Caius. Notably, she never appears again in the timeline. She mentioned in her Motive Rant that she was doing this because she found out, due to study of the timeline that she only existed due to a Paradox, one that the heroes would invariably fix, causing her to vanish. In fact, if you go back afterwards... no one's heard of any Alyssa—the only hint she's been there is that Hope remembers her and one of the other assistants seems to remember the name.
• Killer Rabbit: The Chichu monster, which is essentially a big seed on legs with cute little plant sprouts growing out of it. Raised to its maximum potential, it has arguably the highest damage output of any monster in the entire game.
  • Chocobos certainly don't look as harmless, but given their usual role in the series you wouldn't expect them to be among the thoughest random encounters and top-tier monsters in their respective roles.
• Kill the Cutie: Yeul and Serah, former one repeatedly.
• Lampshade Hanging: After accepting a Fetch Quest in Academia 4XX AF, Serah says "If there's one thing we're good at, it's looking for weird objects."
• Last Lousy Point:
  • You'll also need to fight Long Gui and Yomi for two Fragments, who are considered by some to be even tougher then the final boss.
  • Yet another Fragment requires that you earn tons of coins from the slot machine. And in this game, the slot machines behave like real ones—in other words, your control over the outcome approaches zero.
  • The Travel Guide: Academia fragment requires 100% completion of all Academia maps. Academia 400 has constantly-spawning, mostly inescapable enemies to trip you up. Academia 4XX is by far the most complex map in the game, full of little nooks and crannies that will take a long while to explore fully. Academia 500 is a constantly shifting platforming level with multiple switches changing which platforms are accessible. Bring a snack and a stress-ball.
  • The Paradox Endings Beneath a Timeless Sky and Heir of Chaos. Both of them are fights against a really hard version of Caius without your whole party. Beneath a Timeless Sky gives you Serah and your Mons, while Heir of Chaos pits Noel in a Duel Boss against Caius. Even if you've maxed out the Crystarium, you still don't get much breathing room, and Caius is absolutely relentless.
  • One Fragment requires that you defeat every single enemy in the game. No other Fragment compares to how long this takes, given the number of opponents, the rarity of some opponents (Tezcatlipoca spawns on one platform in Academia 500AF. If you fought anything else on that platform, you have to redo that level from the beginning, because it doesn't spawn again), and the difficulty of the opponents, like all the Optional Boss versions of Caius, Long Gui, Yomi, and Raspatil.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: In almost every piece of advertising for this game, it shows Serah, revealing that she is revived from her crystallized status.
• Law of Chromatic Superiority: Most monster families have an 'albino' variant, which is usually rarer/more powerful. Oh, and a massive Guide Dang It! to find.
• Layered Metropolis: Academia has multiple levels of streets and platforms to walk on. The different levels are connected by conveyor belts. The ground is not even visible.
• "Leave Your Quest" Test: While in the dream world you get the choice to stay there or continue the adventure. Accepting the dream leads to one of several Paradox Endings in the game.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: Well, she probably can if the writers feel like it, but here it manifests more accurately by the fact that enemies and event-based item boxes appear in form of a bolt of reddish-purple lightning striking their spawn location.
  • This seems to be how the Proto-Fal'cie instantly converts people into Cie'th. What he's actually doing is a Call-Back to the first game: turning people into l'Cie, but not giving them a Focus, hench insta-Cie'th.
• Limit Break:
  • Mons have a Synchronization gauge that fills up as they fight with you. Once it's full, you can unleash their Feral Link.
  • Serah and Noel both can get their Full ATB Attack (Serah's is Ultima Arrow and Noel's in Meteor Javelin), but they're only useable once per fight unless you use an Elixir.
  • The Scourge and Smite abilities that Commandos can use. They only activate if any enemy is about to recover from Stagger, and do about five times the normal amount of damage.
• Loads and Loads of Loading: The loading screens last much longer then the first game, and it really shows. At worst, it could take a full minute. There's also every time you enter a timeline from the menu. The resulting traveling-through-time animation always takes 25-30 seconds, and it can't be skipped. Justified, since the game is attempting to load the entire world from scratch and there are barely any loading scenes in the areas themselves except for the Academia variants, which is really huge and relies on small corridors between larger areas.
• Long Song, Short Scene: All the Aggressive Mix count, since you will never hear them entirely during the game. It's actually quite sad to miss some of them, like the New Bodhum (Aggressive) one. Fortunately, you can pause when the monsters appear and just let the music play if you're looking for Awesome Music.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: Serah and Noel get trapped in separate ones. Vanille and Fang free Serah from hers, and Serah saves Noel from his.
• Magikarp Power: A few monsters can fall straight into this trope.
  • The biggest example is Twilight Odin, who is weak when you first get him. With enough sufficient leveling, he can become an absolute monster. Too bad he's overshadowed by other monsters that attack faster than him, do more damage than he does at equal or lower strength values and don't waste time posing after every 4 attacks.
  • The Cait Sith you get as one of your two first Mons can, with time and patience, be one of the best Medics in the game.
  • Noel is this in comparison to Serah. In the beginning, he tends to have lower stats, but towards the end he outpaces her in stat growth.
  • Chichu starts off average and its slow growth in its early levels keeps it average. However, its stat growth in the later levels accelerates like a rocket, and at max level you will have a squeaky wrecking ball. There's a reason why many players have a Chichu in their late- to post-game Paradigm Pack.
• Manual Leader, A.I. Party: The player controls one party member at once and has the option of customizing the AI of the party. Also, the game adds the option of switching the character you're controlling directly mid-battle.
• Marathon Boss: Caius' Final Boss form can be beaten fairly quickly by a high level party with the right strategy. Then we have the version of Caius who can be encountered in the Void Beyond in a Paradox Ending, and keeps casting Regen on himself. The official guide's recommended strategy is to grind him down with wound damage, and they estimate this will take fifteen to twenty-five minutes.
• Marathon Level: Episode 5, which once started, you cannot go back to the Historia Crux until you finish it or get a Paradox Ending (of which the chapter has three, though only two will return you to the Crux.) Technically, you can return to the Crux, but the only locations available to you will be whichever one you were working on, and Serendipity, if you really fancy a break.
• Masquerade: After the AI of Augusta Tower murdered the members of Academia, it created a "staff" of androids that looked identical to the original staff in order to hide what had happened from the general populace. It then took over Academia, which itself eventually became the de facto government.
• Master Computer: Augusta Tower is a gigantic computer, complete with little glowing Tron Lines.
• Maximum HP Reduction: The game adds the Wounding mechanic, wherein certain attacks and monsters reduce the target's maximum HP to force the player to avoid long battles. Although such wounds are thankfully covered by After-Combat Recovery, no magic and only two specific potions (one of which is Elixir) can heal them in combat.
• Mercy Kill: Caius to Noel and Serah, trapping them in a dreamworld paradise outside of time. They break out, however, but not without help.
• Mind Screw:
  • The Secret Ending.
  • With time and space itself overlapping and blending together, the entire game might qualify.
• Minigame Zone: Serendipity
• Min-Maxing: The Crystarium has big nodes that give you a small stat bonus in either HP, ATK, or MAG depending on which role you decide to level up on the big node, which starts adding up if you concentrate on a single stat. As a result, some people opt to have an all-MAG and all-ATK build for Serah and Noel, respectively.
  • Similarly, you level up your Mons with materials that enhance one of the same three stats at each node, or all three to a slightly lesser degree.
• Mons: Also known as "your third party member". Defeating most monsters will has a chance of causing them to turn into crystals, and you can then use the crystallized monster in battle alongside Serah and Noel. Paradigm shifts switch monsters and they level up with you and can be customized to an extent. They're pretty much Pokémon. Mog also counts toward this.
• Monster Arena: The Coliseum allows you to fight optional bosses. All of them are DLC, though.
• Monster Compendium: With a sidequest for 100% Completion, to boot.
• Mood Dissonance: Chocolina, who's always cheery no matter where she is (with a few exceptions. In Academia 400 AF, she's depressed that everyone's being turned into Cie'th. Right before the finale in Academia 500 AF, she also gets a little downcast when she realizes that if Serah and Noel resolve the final paradox, she may never see them again.)
• Mood Whiplash: Do not expect any mood in this game to last for long, especially if you're going for post-game 100% completion. A third of the Live Trigger options will lead to Serah and/or Noel and/or Mog shooting the moment with a machine gun.
• Mr. Exposition: Mog and Noel, on occasion.
• Multiple Endings: But the majority of the multiple endings don't actually affect the gameplay, and there is only one true ending.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The Myth Arc concerning the birth of the fal'Cie, directly parallels the story of Noah and his disciples in Final Fantasy III. Pulse gets the power to create magical beings and shape the world as he sees fit, Lindzei gains the power to guard the unseen realm of the divine, and Etro gets nothing, and floods the world in darkness as an act of sorrow and revenge. This is in addition to trying to seek out a force of nature that models itself in the image of a female deity.
  • In the first round of the Gilgamesh fight, he shoots Rocket Launchers at one target, much like his Rocket Punch ability.
  • Caius stabbing Noel in the back seems very familiar. A little too familiar.
    • The opening scene itself (which plays both in Attract Mode and when you start a new game) takes it further: Caius placing Yeul's body in the water on the seaside of Valhalla, a la Cloud and Aerith.
  • At the end of the Valhalla prologue, Caius drops a meteor on Etro's temple. In response, Lightning summons Odin to give her an airborne Fastball Special, whereupon she flies into the flaming doom from above.
  • The way that Caius holds Yeul and lowers her into the water in the opening cinematic is very reminiscent of Cloud and Aerith.
  • The scene in New Bodhum Year Unknown when Lightning is standing on the pier, shrouded in darkness, and puts her hand out for Serah to join her is very similar to when Riku holds out his hand to Sora in Kingdom Hearts.
  • Lightning's crystallized state is similar to one of the promo pics of the first game.
  • The Brain Blast questions in Academia have plenty of these as answers. Amongst them are mentions of Balamb Garden and prisoners who gained their freedom by winning a chocobo race.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast
  • The first boss is named Gogmagog, a Biblical reference.
  • Caius, named after many a Roman emperor and phonetically similar to "chaos"
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • Lightning is not the protagonist of this game, although the earliest trailers were basically her and Caius in the opening. Even the logo is just her and Caius facing off.
  • In a remarkable piece of false advertising, the trailer at the end of the playable demo showed Omega in the game. No "Omega Coliseum is DLC" or "Omega Coliseum sold separately" disclaimer, just a hook to get long-time fans to buy the game... before the soul-crushing realisation that Omega isn't actually in the game and would be released a month later. For more money.
• New Game Plus: This can be achieved by closing gates and re-entering them, causing you to play through the area's events again with all of your current stats and items.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: The Eyes Of Etro for Yeul and Serah, Lightning becoming a Nigh-Invulnerable demi-goddess and according to one of the fragments, some civilians get access to magic upon reaching the surface of Pulse.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the normal ending where Noel kills Caius, he ends up letting Caius take over the world.
  • Taking it up a level, Etro herself for saving the l'Cie at the end of FFXIII, which disrupts the timeline and sets into motion the events that inevitably lead to the above scenario and her own death.
  • Sazh does this during his downloadable episode. As a result of collecting medals to find Dajh, he also "destroys" the future.
  • In one of the timelines, Hope directs the building of a fully functional Cie'th-happy fal'Cie, which kills him and Alyssa and basically takes over the civilized world.
• No Fourth Wall: Gilgamesh doesn't even know what a fourth wall is.
  Gilgamesh:"I've been waiting in this Coliseum for so very long now! I was starting to worry that you'd never download this part of the game, and I'd be stuck in digital limbo!" (cue confused expression from Serah and Noel)
• Non-Combat EXP: You can get CP (the game's form of EXP) from finding fragments throughout every area, which are obtained by completing sidequests or main missions. However, the CP gained from fragments not directly related to killing things tends to be pretty poor.
• No Fair Cheating: In Lightning's DLC scenario, her stats are maxed out at level 10, making the bosses a cakewalk. In return, you can not obtain a five-star rank, and thus unlock Lightning's crystal.
• No Side Paths No Exploration No Freedom: Intentionally and deliberately averted with areas more complex and intertwined than before.
• Now, Where Was I Going Again?:
  • The characters will be happy to remind you what's going on nearly every time you enter a gate. This is useful if you've been sidetracked catching Mons, Sidequests, or by Serendipity, but a tad annoying if you've played straight through and just heard similar dialog less than five minutes before.
  • You can see sidequests you've accepted via the menu.
  • When you load your game from the title screen, a brief Previously on… will play, reminding you of the story so far.

Tropes O-Z

• Obvious Rule Patch: The PC port locks off the DLC chapters until you beat the game so you can't get any Disc-One Nukes that way.
• Old Save Bonus: If the player has save data for Final Fantasy XIII on their HD, the success rate of the slots minigame in Xanadu/Serendipity will be higher, mostly. They also unlock several in game items, a theme for your Playstation Dashboard (for PS3) and a gamer picture (for Xbox 360).
• Onscreen Chapter Titles: The chapter titles, or "episodes," on-screen accompanied by the location where they take place, accompanied by narration from Lightning. See here for an example.
• Only Smart People May Pass: The Hands of Time Temporal Rifts veer straight into this trope, with players wasting half an hour on one puzzle being a common sight. Thankfully, IGN made a excel spreadsheet that does it for you here. For those willing to look at Japanese, this page doesn't require Excel. Just input the number at the top of the "clock" into the spot labeled 0 and go clockwise from there.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Caius's Theme
• Ominous Message from the Future: One of the Memory Fragments you can uncover in New Bodhum 700 AF with Paradox Scope on is a message to Serah from Future!Serah, which pretty much tells you that Serah will die in the end. Of course, since you only acquire the Paradox Scope after beating the game, you already know that.
• One-Winged Angel: Of course, this being Final Fantasy, Caius can transform himself into a dark dragon called Chaos Bahamut and Jet Bahamut in the final battle.
  • Special mention for Jet Bahamut: He brings along Garnet Bahamut and Amber Bahamut, and constantly re-summons them throughout the fight. That's right, the last boss is actually three dragons.
• Painting the Medium:
  • If a particularily strong rare monster appears, it does so in form of a small black hole, which causes horizonal static lines to appear on the screen.
  • Augusta Tower 300 AF is suffering from malfunctions due to the paradoxes; the screen is covered with hazy lines while you're there.
  • In the secret ending, Caius talks about the player having seen all eight endings.
• Palette Swap:
  • Several bosses are directly re-used from 13, only with a new paint job—for example, Atlas uses the mostly unused Titan character model.
  • On a larger scale, many monsters are "family" monsters which reuse very similar or exactly the same models, with new textures. This is actually useful in some instances, as it's possible to find monsters with the Pack Mentality auto-ability, which makes them stronger if all three monsters in your Paradigm Pack are from the same family.
  • Most of the NPCs are palette swaps of each other, with only clothing and hair color changed.
• Palmtree Panic: New Bodhum
• Peninsula Of Powerleveling:
  • If one goes to a very tiny spot at AF 400 Academia just before you fight Zenobia, and turn on a turbo fire controller (or mash the X button A LOT), then you can accumulate LOTS of Crystanium points.
  • For monster materials, Archylte Steppe -Year Unknown- just throws them at you. Especially in storm weather.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • Generally averted. After obtaining the proper seal, you can lock a time gate and go back to the area as it was when you first arrived. Because of this, few things are truly lost, even the Live Trigger rewards.
  • Unique monster crystals that can only be gotten by throwing Mog at specific spots used to be this, in the sense that if you picked the wrong Crystarium upgrades for them or infused another monster with them (which was the only way to pass on the useful Pack Mentality skill), you couldn't get another one, but thanks to Snow's DLC, all versions of Valfodr have 2 of the unique monsters as their drop items and thus you can get as many extras as you want.
• Perpetual Molt: Lightning, as fitting her Valkyrie motif.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Serah wears pink and white, whereas Noel wears blue and black.
• Pop Quiz: There is a man named Captain Cryptic who asks Serah questions about the world they live in. The Brain Blast quiz podiums scattered around Academia 4XX AF also count.
• Previously on…: Every time you continue the game, some clips are shown of what happened the last time you played. It seems to be a random collection of clips from previous cutscenes, and sometimes doesn't really help the player remember what happened before.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: Sazh, Vanille, and Fang make only cameo appearances in the game. The other three have slightly larger roles.
• Proud Hunter Race: Noel comes from the Hunters, a nomadic race on Gran Pulse who carry on the tradition of hunting for food instead of having it provided to them by the Fal'Cie. Noel is known in the mythos of the game as "The Last Hunter."
• Pungeon Master: Brant, an NPC involved in one of the fragment mission sidequests. The player must play along by responding with puns provided by the game in order to obtain the fragment.
• Ragnarök Proofing:
  • Some of the locations you visit don't change much at all across the timeline, with only a few areas opening up or being closed off, but no major changes even after a century or more.
  • The sporty wristwatch takes a licking, and keeps on ticking. After being lost in a ravine for 100 years, it can be dusted off and returned to its owner in the past still in working condition. Somewhat justified by having one of the fragments mentioning Snow wanting a wristwatch that can take tons of punishment and Maqui coming up with one, which probably was made into its own brand at some point in the past.
• Random Encounters: Unlike the previous game, which had Pre-existing Encounters, here the monsters mostly pop straight out of rifts in space and time to attack you with almost no warning. You can still run away from them beforehand, though, and in fact it's easier to avoid encounters entirely if you wish. Just know what you're doing, otherwise the Moogle Clock will run out and you'll have to deal with the encounter with the Retry option locked.
  • This varies depending on the type of monster and sometimes the location. Often enough just walking straight ahead will let you skip, but some monsters react quickly and move too fast to be outrun, if they don't pop up right in front of you to begin with. And in the only area where they appear by other means the timer is so short that you have no chance to avoid them.
• Random Number God: There is a sidequest in Oerba's times which involves rotating clock-like hands (called a "Temporal Rift"). Usually, it's very straightforward since the game leads you through them, the first few of these quests are not randomized, and each decision is not under a time limit despite having only one chance. They get progressively harder however, and the final Fragment is ends with thirteen randomized movements and you still have that one chance or you restart the entire thing from scratch. Thankfully, there are online solver programs out there, such as this.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Caius does this a couple of times, most notably to the player in the secret ending.
• Recurring Extra: Chocolina shows up almost everywhere, acting as a Dungeon Shop.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: A menu-based variant. When you initially progress through the game, you have a blue menu. Whenever the "Paradox" Fragment is turned on, the menu will become red.
• Replacement Goldfish: After Snow leaves to find Lightning, Serah adopts a cat and names it Snow.
• Ret-Gone:
  • Lightning, of all people, in the "main" timeline. Makes seeing snippets of the ending of XIII, only with that particular character missing (and Serah being the only one who notices anything is wrong—something she's considered mildly insane for believing) absolutely horrific. Doubly so since the player presumably remembers the original ending to the game.
  • Etro did the inverse, saving the party from XIII after the fight with Orphan, which causes a few problems.
• The Reveal: Turns out, it's the moogle's bobble that allows them to fly. The wings are just for show.
  • The Eyes of Etro drastically shorten the lifespan of those who bear them.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Serah and Noel, alongside a few others. In Noel's case, memories relating to his native era aren't impervious, as Serah figures out in a brief narrative moment roundabouts Academia 4XX AF.
• Save Scumming: As expected of any game that involve gambling. Bonus points go to the Card game in Sazh's DLC, which allows you to play "All In", essentially doubling (or even tripling, if you are lucky) your credit if you win, if not, reload.
• Scenery Gorn/Scenery Porn : Academia, The Vile Peaks, Sunleth Waterscape, Valhalla... they really went crazy on the visuals.
• Second Chapter Cliffhanger: It ends with Serah abruptly dying and the world suddenly being reformed due to the release of Chaos. Lightning is revealed to have been crystallized again and "To Be Continued" is displayed. Although this was thought to be a hint for the player to unlock the rest of the game's multiple endings, the Paradox Endings were simply alternate ways to end the story early, while the secret Omega Ending reveals that Caius succeeded in his goal.
• Self-Deprecation: Final Fantasy games tend to create a new remix of Chocobo's Theme for use in-game, each within a new genre of music. "Crazy Chocobo", the game's version of Chocobo's Theme, parodies this concept by being Heavy Metal, a genre of music one wouldn't expect such a simple theme to have an official variation in. The song's tone makes riding Chocobos seem akin to Mundane Made Awesome.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy/Tempting Fate: The seeress of Paddra predicted that the city would be destroyed. The resulting anarchy and civil war from this prediction ended up destroying the city.
• Sequel Hook: The secret ending, which involves lots of Breaking the Fourth Wall and Mind Screw. The endings for Lightning's DLC count as well.
• Serious Business: Two of Chocolina's chocobo chicks in Sazh's episode involve this. The male chick wants to ask out the female chick, so he gives Sazh a letter to deliver, and then she doesn't like that he can't come himself... After a bit, the two finally get together to some romantic music.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Noel comes from a Bad Future, which he escaped from by going to Valhalla, which he then left to his past to change the future. Also, Future!Hope wants to save Fang, Vanille, and his mother.
• Shipper on Deck/Ship Tease: Lebreau teases Serah about Noel at the beginning of the game.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Timey-wimey stuff cancels out the seemingly happy ending from XIII. The plot of this game centers around Serah searching for Lightning, who has vanished for no apparent reason. Various time paradoxes destroy progress made by the protagonists. In the end, Serah dies after beating the Big Bad, Lightning is crystallized, and the Big Bad gets better.
• Shout-Out:
  • Amodar's Feral Link is a Shungokusatsu in all but name: this is made even obvious by its QTE command, which is SGS' command in a 4 button layout.
  • One of the reccomended names for chocobos is "Big Bo".
  • The Proto fal'Cie Adam can use an attack called "Gate of Babylon", which summons a bunch of swords to rain down on its target.
  • The Bestiary description for all of the bomb type enemies says "Capable of self-destructing for massive damage."
  • For the second Live Trigger in the morning at New Bodhum, one of the options for Serah's question is "What's this 'gate'?"
• Silliness Switch: Half of the Live Trigger rewards are obtained by selecting the weirdest answer. Some of them also make Serah out to be a bit of a Cloud Cuckoolander.
  • Also, the Adornments you can put on your monsters range from Baseball caps, to 4 leaf clovers.
• Skyward Scream: Noel after Serah dies.
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • The ending song, New World, an upbeat pop song with hopeful lyrics that really clashes with the bitter ending.
  • Hey guys, a meteor just crashed into New Bodhum, the entire beach is covered from head to toe in monsters, and we have no idea what the hell is going on! You know what this calls for? An upbeat jazzy rock song!
• Squat's in a Name: An almost-unheard-of in-universe example: Hope names the new Cocoon "Bhunivelze", which is the name of the god that created the fal'Cie Pulse, Lindzei, and Etro in the Fabula Nova Crystallis mythology. There is no real indication that Hope even knows who Bhunivelze is, nor is there any explanation why the new Cocoon would be named "Bhunivelze" in the first place.
  • The database regarding the new Cocoon in Lightning Returns hints that perhaps, at the time, Hope naming the Ark as such means God's plans were already underway. Plus, the naming occurred minutes before Serah's death and Chaos flooding the world, marking the event that would awaken Bhunivelze from his long sleep...
• Stable Time Loop: The Proto fal'Cie Adam uses time-travel to go back to its creation at 13 AF and kill off Hope, Alyssa, and the other Academy scientists, allowing itself to take control of the tower and the city of Academia. This means that no matter how many times Noel and Serah kill off the fal'Cie, it will just keep regenerating. Eventually this chicken-and-egg scenario is resolved: Serah curses Hope out as she attacks the fal'Cie. Her outcry and battle with the fal'Cie is recorded on the Oracle Drive in the past, causing Hope in 13 AF to see what will happen in 200 AF and abandon the project.
• Stat Grinding: Like the first game, the Crystarium works like this.
• Stepping Stones in the Sky:
  • During the opening battle between Lightning and Caius, this happens twice. First traditionally, and then on pieces of metal frozen in place with a gravity spell.
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon is basically this, complete with an out-of-place platforming segment.
• The Stinger: The secret ending, which appears after the ending credits, after 100% Completion, with the Paradox Scope enabled.
• Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: Found in a Fragment that provides a poem about/from the sheep of Gran Pulse titled "The Melancholy of the Lambs:"
  It's hard to be sheep
  out here on the plain,
  Avoiding the hunters
  is such a terrible strain.
  Oh, I wish that once
  I could munch on some grass
  Without a man coming to pull
  a tuft from my... side.
• Sudden Downer Ending: The game ends with Serah and Noel defeating Caius for good, with Caius impaling himself on Noel's sword after Noel refuses to kill him. Afterward, Serah and Noel return to Academia 500AF, deciding to take up permanent residence there. The two land on top of Hope's ship and everything seems fine until Serah gets another vision of the future, which immediately kills her. And then Etro dies (because Caius had Etro's heart beating in his chest, so when he died, she died), causing Chaos to flood the world and plunge it into eternal darkness. The final shot before the credits roll reveals that Lighting has turned to crystal once again.
• Superboss: XIII-2 has MANY BONUS BOSSES compared to XIII. The Long Gui returns, and despite only having a quarter of the HP it had in XIII, it's still extremely tough to put down. Yomi is a weaker (but still formidable) version of Vercingetorix. And finally, there's Raspatil, a horrifyingly powerful Undying Cie'th that's probably the hardest fight in the vanilla game. The DLC Coliseum fights consist entirely of bosses that are much harder than what's in the main game.
• Take That!: An Academia 4XX AF NPC girl notes this:
  All the boys want to do is play war games. Why can't they grow up? They're so immature.
• Take Your Time: Due to how the Historia Crux works, time will stop flowing in one location once you leave, and will only continue flowing when you return. Because of this, there is no rush to complete an area's objective.
  • Atlas, once he fully materializes, will wait for you in that courtyard for as long as you want while you continue running around the Bresha Ruins doing other stuff.
• A Taste of Power: In the prologue, you control Lightning, who is very powerful and wins the opening battles with little challenge.
• Thanatos Gambit: Caius never wanted to destroy Cocoon. His plan was to get the heroes pissed off enough to kill him. It worked.
• Theme Naming:
  • The soundtrack titles fit the descriptions of the characters. Disc 1 is Serah, which has "Paradox," and "Worlds Collide." Disc 2 is Noel, which has "Unseen Intruder", "Eclipse," and "Eyes of Etro." Disc 3 is Caius, which has "Oathbrand," "Chaotic Guardian," and "Augusta Tower." Disc 4 is Lightning, which has "A Fading Miracle," "Etro's Gate," and "Unseen Abyss."
  • In-Universe example: the Blitz Squadron had their call-names after Lightning's, in honor of their once-cooperation before her leave for the Purge. Blitz is even the name of an ability, but names like "Thunder", "Falcon", and "Sarge" come to mind.
  • Both Noel's and Yeul's names have a connection to Christmas, and thus, to each other and hinting at their bond.
• These Hands Have Killed: Noel does this when he realizes that he indirectly and inadvertently killed Etro.
• Time Crash: The actions of Etro accidentally cause this, Ret Goning Lightning and directly leading to the plot of the game. The canon ending is this on a larger scale.
• Time Paradox: The theme of the game.
• Time Travel: The Historia Crux system allows the player to travel through gates that lead to different time periods, akin to Chrono Trigger. It is slightly extended from the CT system, however, in that there are several alternate versions (in some cases up to 4, but a few are just for Paradox Endings) of most time periods.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: The plot runs on it. The characters use the term "paradox" as shorthand for mysterious temporal anomalies like people and objects vanishing from one time period and appearing in another, it's not always fully clear how or why paradoxes occur, and while events in one time period can effect the state of things in another, it's not always clear how, as decades or centuries may pass between time periods. Additionally, it is directly stated both in the datalogs and in dialogue that changing the future can change the past; once something occurs in the future, the past is rewritten to lead up to that future happening. The game directly lampshades that this doesn't fully make sense, because if it were true that would mean the past would constantly change to fit future events as they unfold, so there must be a point - or a person - who is considered to be "in the future" for purposes of being able to redefine the past.
• Tomorrowland: Academia 400 AF.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Serah is an active participant in the storyline instead of a sort of Posthumous Character.
  • Hope. From the initially-weak kid with I'Cie powers in the first game to the de facto leader of the world in this one. He saves Serah and Noel multiple times.
  • Lightning wasn't exactly weak at the end of the last game, but in the opening Caius calls her "warrior goddess." He isn't exaggerating.
• Total Eclipse of the Plot: The eclipse that happens at some point in future history is implied to have darkened the entire continent for years. Justified by it being caused by a fal'Cie rather than a celestial object. This trope also applies to Yaschas Massif 010AF to a lesser extent.
• To the Pain: One of the Undying Cie'th you battle, Gorgyra, was once a female bodyguard to a Yeul. After being tricked by an enemy nearly leads to the seeress' death, Gorgyra is so ashamed that she asks a fal'Cie to turn her into a Cie'th as punishment (much to Yeul's opposition). Just before the transformation, said fal'Cie gives her a rather disturbingly detailed description of what's about to happen to her.
• Tragically Misguided Favor: Caius executes a centuries-long plan to stop Yeul's cycle of reincarnation that leads to her being killed over and over again by her own prophetic gift. Towards the end of the game, it turns out that Yeul is Not Afraid to Die, and all she ever wanted was to spend her lifetimes with Caius and Noel—a dream that Caius himself ruined by his quest.
• Trailers Always Spoil:
  • Beware the latest PS3 and XBOX360 trailers, which are spoiling things way too much. For example, the XBOX360 trailer reveals scenes which lead us to think that Noel and Yeul are going to die. The XBOX360 trailer goes as far as showing Caius stabbing Noel in the back, leaving him to die. Of course, we know that we should Never Trust a Trailer, or that with the multiple endings the game will have, we only see one of the paths our choices may lead us... Still, it's going a little too far.
  • The latest PS3 trailer (released at the same time as the above) has another (and different!) spoiler: it confirms that Lightning and Serah eventually reunite through the time travel paradigms, which seemed to be a little bit too far for trailers 3-4 months before the release.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change
  • Academia 500 AF is a maze that involves platforming. The developers explained that they wanted to make an area to take advantage of the new jumping ability.
  • A more minor example is in Academia 400 AF. Enemies appear in a different way than usual, with a very short timer that makes it impossible to avoid any encounters.
  • Lightning's episode has a different development system: Lightning levels up in a more traditional manner, where she gains stats and abilities once enough Crystogen points are earned.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Averted. Many people will talk about Mog or will say that your clothes look strange. People will also react with fear when you activate Mog Search and you can even draw a crowd to yourself when you throw Mog or make an item appear with Mog Search. Guards and tame chocobos will also attack any monsters that appear out of nowhere. Chocobos also seem to be very popular with the NPCs.
• Useless Useful Spell:
  • The Wound spell. Wounding reduces the max HP of the victim. On your characters, getting severely wounded was a grave concern, and a serious impetus to finish battles quickly against enemies capable of Wounding. Since enemies tend to have high HP and don't usually heal much, it's much less useful in player hands unless you have a monster with the Bloodthirsty ability.
  • The Jungle Law passive ability certain monsters have. It increases the strength and magic of the monster against enemies with less HP than they have, but decreases it against enemies with more HP. This is a game where your average mook has five digit HP, and since only a handful of monsters break five digits, it generally reduces them to infusion fodder or permanent benchwarmers.
  • Buffing and debuffing in general aren't much use outside of specific boss battles. It's usually quicker to beat Mooks by hammering them with magical and physical attacks, and the final boss can also be beaten the same way if you have a high level party.
• Vagueness Is Coming: Both Cocoon and Gran Pulse are prophesied to be doomed, but the exact nature of the calamity remains unclear because time has been twisted and warped so many times that any of a number of things could cause it.
• Variable Mix: Most of the area themes have an "Aggressive Mix" that kicks in when monsters show up.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Academia 500 AF.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • Using the Moogle Throw will have Mog squirm and panic. It's rather cute though. Actually throwing him can have him bounce off obstacles and fall down cliffs. Good thing he seems to be Made of Iron. This is also made more amusing by the fact that whenever you throw him, all NPCs nearby gather around him regardless of whether they're little kids or hardened soldiers when they just express some casual wonderment when he's flying around.
  • Infusing monsters with others, which apparently destroys the second monster. Even the monster that's been fighting with you for hours is liable to be sacrificed to a better one the moment it shows up.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind:
  • Gogmagog, an unusual being that pops up in random portals and forces you to fight him in a boss battle several times in the early game. After a long string of Wham Episodes and a very depressing Tear Jerker, Gogmagog shows up as the boss in the time period late in the game... only for him to rarely attack (and when he does, it's fairly weak to any sufficiently-leveled party), along with use "Writhe", which is like "Splash" but worse: it inflicts a random debuff on himself. ^note If you take too long, Gogmagog will transfer every status ailment he stacked to the entire party, including Pain and Fog at the same time, among others. He just doesn't last enough for most players to experience this.
  • Caius gets stronger as the game goes on, but he doesn't directly scale to the party. An underprepared party will have a lot of trouble with Final Boss Caius, but a maxed-out party will crush him.
• Void Between the Worlds: The Void Beyond, described as the "area between gates," which Serah and Noel use as rest stops upon their first few visits.
• Wake-Up Call Boss:
  • The weakened Atlas you fight in episode 2. This is the first battle where you'll actually have to switch paradigms and be reasonably leveled to beat.
  • Similarly, the full power Atlas hammers home the concept that you are simply not going to be strong enough to pick every path. Fortunately, later in the game you gain the ability to forcibly rewind time, starting chapters over with your current stats, which is basically New Game Plus.
  • Royal Ripeness in episode 3b is an interesting case in that he serves as a Wake-Up Call not for the gameplay, but for the revamped Crystarium system. XIII-2's Crystaria have 'nodes' of two sizes; the larger nodes will give Serah and Noel a stat boost dependent on what role was levelled on that node (and, in the case of Synergist and Saboteur, whether they reached an even or odd level). If they have received any reasonable boosts to their offensive stats, the beefy flan is easily dealt with at the expected level; if, however, all of those large nodes have been put into HP boosts (whether via Self-Imposed Challenge or sheer foul luck for a blind leveller), His Royal Ripeness becomes a Marathon Boss whose sub-flans' continuous use of Revitalize will outpace your damage-dealing capability without Deshell/Deprotect on him and a well-maintained stagger, and will take on the verge of 15 minutes with.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: This was mostly removed from gameplay, presumably as a reaction to complaints against this mechanic in the original game. If the party leader dies in battle, you'll be automatically switched to whomever wasn't the party leader, assuming he or she is still alive. You may also switch between leaders at any point within the battle. However, if both Noel and Serah die in battle, it's Game Over, even if your current monster knows Raise. Perhaps the monster takes the opportunity to high tail it before he's infused into another monster?
• Welcome to Corneria: Played aggravatingly straighter than in the previous game, with background characters talking whenever Noel or Serah walks past them instead of whenever they're spoken to. Most NPCs have a few quotes that are shared between multiple people; depending on how much backtracking you do, you might not even hear the entire set for a given figure. NPCs for Fragment sidequests, however, have two lines, tops, that they will alternate between on the nose. Bresha Ruins 5 AF has two such sidequests... which can be accepted from any of ten different soldiers each. You will not walk through the ruins without hearing both lines for both sidequests numerous times.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Ultimately, Big Bad Caius is not looking to rule/destroy the world. He's hoping to create a timeless place where Yeul never has to die, which unfortunately will have the side-effect of collapsing every timeline ever. And he succeeds in the end.
• Wham Episode:
  • After Serah and Noel are sent through a sabotaged time gate by Alyssa, they get separated and both run into Caius. Who then proceeds to LITERALLY stab our heroes in the back!
  • Seconds before that you discover that the original and correct history has everyone frozen in crystal at the end of XIII. The only reason the party, save for Vanille and Fang, survived was due to the timely intervention of the goddess Etro... something that ended up killing her and dooming the timeline (and humanity) to a slow death.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Several major people in the storyline vanish outright and are never mentioned again. Case in point, no mention of Alyssa after her betrayal outside of a Paradox Ending. This is almost acceptable with her since her betrayal was apparently due to her discovering that the heroes succeeding in their adventure would Ret-Gone her.
• Who Dares?: When Noel and Sarah stumble into the Coliseum in search of a fragment, the first thing they hear from the Arbiter of Time is "Who dares?! Explain this intrusion!" Noel tells him that they'll leave if he gives them the fragment and since he wants neither the fragment ("an omen of time-shattering misfortune") nor their presence, he gives them the fragment and they leave.
• Worf Effect: The Shiva Sisters are fighting alongside Lightning during the opening cutscene in Valhalla. In XIII, summoning or neglecting to summon an Eidolon could make or break some of the hardest fights in the game; on two ocassions, starting a fight in Gestalt Mode resulted in a curb-stomp that had the battle over before you could do anything else. Caius gives Nix a Facepalm Of Doom and throws her as Stiria, and Lightning vs. Caius is more-or-less a one-on-one^*although Odin and Bahamut appear in their Gestalt Modes in the playable bits, Lightning is doing all the attacking herself for the rest of the prologue.
• Xanatos Gambit: Either Caius' plans to destroy Time succeed (by killing Etro directly or by forcing open the Unseen Gate by crashing the new Cocoon), or the heroes kill him... which kills Etro and also would destroy Time as well. If they don't kill him, he can keep trying his Plan A until they do. Lightning realizes the futility of fighting against him under these conditions, and allows herself to be defeated.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: The finale. Caius has been stopped, all the paradoxes are gone, a new Cocoon has risen, Fang and Vanille have been released from the pillar, and Serah is looking forward to a life reunited with her fiance and sister. Then The Eyes of Etro kill her for having altered time (Even though all she did was undo all of Caius' alterations), it's revealed that killing Caius destroyed the Heart of Chaos and thus Etro with him, and now all of New Cocoon is consumed in an enormous paradox.

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