YMMV / Final Fantasy XIII-2

• Americans Hate Tingle: In Japan, this game is seen as a Even Better Sequel to Final Fantasy XIII, getting perfect scores from both Famitsu and Dengeki PlayStation and winning two Japan Game Awards. In the west, the game is more of a Contested Sequel, being praised for its visuals and non-linearity, but criticized for demoting the original cast and for some writing elements, in particular the ending.
• Anti-Climax Boss: If you prioritize story progression over character development, then the final boss fight can be Very Hard. If you end up with a high-level party because you've been on a long Fragment hunt or something ... not so much.
• Audience-Alienating Ending: The second part of an already divisive trilogy ends with Caius winning and destroying the world, no matter what the player does, and your reward for getting 100% Completion is The Stinger that just consists of Caius taunting you for thinking you could get a better ending. While clearly intended to be a Second Chapter Cliffhanger, so many fans found this (along with the other disliked parts of the game) a giant slap in the face for all the time and effort required to beat the game that when Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, the third and final part, came out and ultimately provided a Belated Happy Ending, it only barely achieved half the sales that XIII-2 did.
• Base-Breaking Character: Some say Caius is a fantastic and well-written Tragic Villain with a sympathetic backstory and motivation, is a total badass, is also a cunning Chessmaster who manipulates everyone to get what he wants, and his victory made him unique among Final Fantasy villains. Others say his motivation is selfish and flimsy Wangst that amounts to whining over the tragic existence of his ward/possible lover/sister-figure/daughter-figure, his powers are too exaggerated in the name of making him cool, he succeeds in his plans because Gambit Roulettes and Idiot Balls keep making things go his way, and him winning no matter what ruins the ending and makes him a boring Invincible Villain and/or Villain Sue.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: During the introduction of the game, Serah spontaneously has her clothes change from her XIII outfit to her clothing in this game. While she and a couple of other characters comment on how strange it is, none of them dwell on it beyond a brief mention, and no explanation or reason for why it happened is ever given.
• Breather Level:
  • Academia 4XX AF. This comes after the long Augusta Tower segments, and before Episode 5. There are no enemies, and your visit may be very quick, depending on if you collected the Graviton Cores.
  • New Bodhum 700 AF. You arrive right before the final dungeon, but the enemies are easy and, minus cutscenes, your visit will be over in minutes.
  • As an optional area, Sunleth Waterscape 400 AF. All seven Fragments are easy to collect, and the boss battle is a joke (of the easy and funny kind).
  • Oerba 300 AF and 400 AF, where a small number of base fights are interspersed with paradox events, where you not only get fragments but gain a side story about Mog in the process.
• Catharsis Factor: Lightning's DLC Episode has a traditional 'level' system that goes up to Level 10; this can only be achieved after having completed the episode in question. The stats of Lightning at Level 10 have absolutely no excuse but this trope - 999999 HP, 9999 Strength and Magic, and Uncapped Damage (contrast Level 9's 120000 HP and 2400 Attack and Magic that don't even threaten the damage cap).
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: With the greater freedom of customization comes predictable patterns.
  • Weapons-wise, most players choose between the Chain Bonus Lv. 5 weapons (Serah: Gandiva, Noel: Grasitha) or the ATB Speed +50% weapons (Serah: Indrajit, Noel: Romulus and Remus).
  • There are some common monsters people choose in their party to tackle the post-game content:
    • Commandos: Chichu, Omega (DLC), Valkyrie Lightning (DLC)
    • Ravagers: Cloudburst, Blue Chocobo, Lightning (DLC)
    • Sentinels: Bunkerbeast, Goblin Chieftain, Pulse Gladiator, Snow (DLC)
    • Saboteurs: Black Chocobo, Celicerata, Jihl Nabaat (DLC)
    • Synergists: Yakshini, Sazh (DLC), Purple Chocobo
    • Medics: Flanitor, Green Chocobo, PuPu (DLC)
• Contested Sequel: With so many changes from the original XIII, both in gameplay and story, this was inevitably going to happen. The general rule of thumb is that people who disliked the original found the sequel to be an improvement in most respects due to a streamlined battle system and more open world design, while those who enjoyed the original were unhappy to see the original party sidelined and the gameplay dumbed down to just two party members and a rotating third one. However, there are also a fair amount of people who dislike both games for different reasons.
• Die for Our Ship: Alyssa initially suffered this just because she was shown being close to Hope in the previews, although in practice Hope is shown to be uncomfortable with it/has no interest in her; he only tolerates it because of Alyssa's brains. A good thing too, since she's The Mole.
• Disappointing Last Level: Academia 500 AF is a long platformer section with rotating platforms, switch puzzles, and enemies that are a jump in difficulty from the previous areas. It's often criticized for slowing the game to a crawl right before the final boss.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Hope, which is odd, considering that he was one of most polarizing characters from XIII. He went from a wangsty Squishy Wizard that only took a few levels in badass toward the end to the leader of the Academy and the de facto ruler of mankind. It also helps that he's now all grown up.
  • The Arbiter of Time makes only one sinister appearance in the base game, and the Coliseum DLC doesn't expand much on him despite being its host and an Optional Boss. This hasn't stopped fans from hailing him as an incredibly cool character who would wreck Caius if not for story purposes; they're similarly disappointed by his absence in the following game.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Canonically, Noel's Love Interest is Yeul, and his primary motivation for traveling back in time is to save her from her fate. However, since their relationship is only briefly touched upon (the game doesn't explicitly describe them as a romantic couple either), and he spends the entire game traveling with Serah, he's more commonly paired up with the latter than the former.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Caius/Lightning (commonly called "Cairai") has a small but loyal following.
• Game-Breaker: Here.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • While you can avoid enemies, some are just relentless. Some are as fast or faster than you. Others have a seemingly endless 'sighted you' zone. Why is this annoying? Well, from how the game's mechanics work, it means you have no other choice but to fight, whether you want to or not.
  • The Cie'th of Academia 400 AF, mainly because they won't go away and have a wide aggro range, leading to instances where you have no clue what you just ran into.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • One of Captain Cryptic's questions was who was carrying a steamy love affair, to which one of the choices was Terra Branford. Captain Cryptic was voiced by Dave Wittenberg in the English version, who also voiced Kefka Palazzo, who did have ties to another Terra Branford in the Dissidia Final Fantasy series.
  • Charice Pempengco sang the theme song of the game, which has a character named Alyssa. A year after the game was released, Charice came out as a lesbian, and her girlfriend is named Alyssa.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: It seems to bring back the same battle system with the same Auto-Battle button right there. Enjoy your Broken Base.
• Iron Woobie: Lightning could be seen as this. She was erased from history save for the memories of a select few people, pulled into a chaotic, dead-looking world with no people and doomed to do eternal battle with her rival to protect Etro. And she ends up being Taken for Granite during the normal ending.
• Jerkass Woobie: Alyssa, who is motivated by a legitimate fear of being erased from existence.
• Magnificent Bastard: Caius Ballard is a Guardian tasked with protecting the seeress and became Paddra legend because of his might. Moved by his honor and tenacity, the goddess Etro awarded the former l'Cie with the Heart of Chaos to make him an immortal warrior to continue his duty forever. Once Caius realizes the curse of immortality, he concocts a plan to destroy of all time, by opening the Door to Souls, so Yeul and indirectly everyone else can no longer experience the pain of mortality. To that end, he tries to kill Etro directly in Valhalla, but when that fails, he sets to collapse Hope's New Coccoon to cause mass destruction, even manipulating a scared Alyssa to put Serah and Noel — his biggest opposition — on a dangerous detour. When that fails as well, Caius has Noel, his Guardian successor he personally groomed, stab the Heart of Chaos. In the end, Caius becomes one of the few series antagonists to completely win.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Toriyama'd" now means that if you play a game where he had a hand in the creative development, expect the story to troll you and make no sense.
  • A lot of people also had a great laugh when one of Serah's Live Trigger options is to say, "The cat is my only family!"
  • TIME AND SPACE TIME AND SPACE TIME AND SPACE TIME AND SPACE: that Historia Crux part of the song is becoming quite popular.
  • "Time and memory, frozen in crystal" is pretty popular too.
  • While Square Enix plays inappropriate music.
  • COME FORTH PUPU!!!
• Narm:
  • When you encounter Aloeidia in the Yaschas Massif 010 AF, the screen freezes on Noel doing a flying jump kick before you enter battle. It's incredibly corny to watch.
  • Serah's overly dramatic pose when catching and aiming her bow moments before the first Atlas fight, especially since she doesn't even fire a single arrow beforehand.
  • If you choose to fight PuPu again in the Coliseum, you get this gem:
    Arbiter of Time: Come forth, PuPu!
  • The entire scene before fighting Gogmagog's final form in A Dying World, mainly when Serah and Noel exclaim, in unison, "We will change the future!"
• Narm Charm:
  • The Coliseum DLC intro, especially when you've purchased all the characters. It is incredibly, intentionally cheesy in a rather funny and awesome way.
  • Crazy Chocobo runs on this trope. Behold as Square Enix tries to make a heavy metal rock theme for Chocobos.
• One-Scene Wonder: Played for funny. The Miniflans in Sunleth Waterscape 400AF are attempting to destroy the crystal pillar, but they need others to help. Eventually, you have to fight them, while Square-Enix plays inappropriate music. They are defeated and scolded by Serah in mere minutes.
• Polished Port:
  • The Xbox One X enhanced version of the 360 port brings up the visual quality and performance of the game that is better than either of the console ports.
  • Taken a step further on Xbox Series X and S where, as of November 15, 2021, the game was given an FPS Boost to 60 frames per second, allowing the game on Series X to run up to a very solid and stable 4K 60 FPS due to retaining the 4K enhancements from One X. Also has auto HDR too if you have the right TV or monitor.
• Porting Disaster: The PC/Steam port of this game is even worse than the port of Final Fantasy XIII as, in addiction to having the same problems regarding graphics and performance, it also tends to crash randomly on certain computers. Sure it includes all of the DLC for free, but you have to watch the main ending to unlock most of it anyway.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Here.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: Overall, this game is much easier than Final Fantasy XIII, as enemies have much less HP, winning battles grants money in addition to CP, and you no longer get a Game Over if the leader dies. That said, the last chapter is noticeable harder than the rest fo the game.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Snow/Serah shippers and Serah/Noel shippers go pretty hard at one another.
• Spiritual Successor: To the Chrono Trigger series as mentioned below. The time travel is even facilitated by "gates" to different eras.
• That One Attack:
  • The final boss' Exaflare deals massive damage and is a Total Party Kill if you're not a Sentinel.
  • Divider, Gilgamesh's cutscene attack. The only indication of it is that he walks into the center of the arena, which can give you either a millisecond or two seconds to switch to Tortoise in time depending on his position. For non-cutscene attacks, his Enfeebling Claw to inflict Pain on your characters costs precious battle time.
  • Gangranth and Quasar, Valfodr's most powerful attacks that not only inflict heavy damage to the party, but also Wound damage.
• That One Boss: Pretty much every battle against Caius in his human form. Not only he can buff himself up and do alot of damage in short time, but also cast Regen (and Reraise late-game) on himself. Honorable mentions to the Duel Boss battles against him in Episode 5.
• That One Level: Academia (in every era) because of the labyrinthine layout that is impossible to navigate intuitively. The map doesn't help since it doesn't separate the lower, middle, and upper levels to different screens, meaning that some areas are completely hidden from view, which also makes the "Paradox Professor" sidequest^note which requires you explore 10 maps 100% for this map a pain. It's even worse in 400 AF, since you're constantly being bombarded with Cie'th battles that you cannot avoid, while still trying to just find your way around.
• That One Puzzle:
  • The Captain Cryptic quiz in Academia 4XX AF. He'll randomly spawn in any area and the only clues you'll have are from the townspeople which isn't really helping that much. It is much worse with having to pay attention for the outline of Captain Cryptic because Mog will not detect him even once you do see him hidden in plain sight.
  • If you dislike the time distortion mini games, then you will HATE Oerba 300 and 400 AF. Running around the same small map playing the three distortion mini games *over and over*. Some of them have 6 stages, and there are 8 or 9 per time period.
• That One Sidequest:
  • The Lucky Coin fragment. To get it you have to win 7,777 coins at the slot machines. And no one seems to be able to agree on whether that's a total number across all plays or all in one sitting (luckily losses aren't counted against that number), but either way expect to lose A LOT of coins, and thus gil in the process.
  • The Brain Blast Quiz and Captain Cryptic's Confounding Quiz. As you'd expect from a quiz minigame in a video game, the quests draw on lore and knowledge primarily from XIII and some alluding to past Final Fantasy titles. But the questions in these quizzes are so obscure that even an expert on Final Fantasy would be left stumped, because some of them are so vague that it's not even entirely clear if the answers are ever given in-game, making the answer impossible to know without a guide, so take your best guess. Then there's questions like "odds or evens?" or "reds or blacks?", which are clearly luck-based and come off as the developers laughing at you.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Lightning herself. Despite all the marketing and trailers focusing on her, it ended up being Wolverine Publicity. Not counting DLC, she only appears in a handful of cutscenes and is only playable in the prologue, which lasts about five minutes.
  • Alyssa. Had they expanded her role and made her dilemma more clear to the heroes, it would have added a lot of layers of moral complexity to their quest.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The actual story of humanity rebuilding on Pulse and adapting to the new world is largely glossed over, and aside from a couple parts early in the game, the story is focused around locations and time periods centuries after Cocoon's fall.
  • Despite the heavy use of time travel, there's only one area where you travel into the past (Archlyte Steppe ??? AF). This seems like a missed opportunity to explore things like Oerba when Fang and Vanille were living there, or explore areas of Cocoon while it was still populated that XIII didn't spend much time exploring.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Available through the DLC is Lightning's former superior, Lieutenant Amodar. He's a Commando-role "monster".
  • Jihl Nabaat is an available combatant.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: There is a cutscene near the end of the game with Noel, Serah, Hope and Mog on an airship. It has a more detailed render than the other cutscenes, and while every individual part of their faces is more detailed, the general effect is a little bit off.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • When the trailer was first released, along with the logo picture, there was more than one person who commented on Lightning's "sexy female rival."
  • Many seem to be confused about Mog's gender (which is canonically male).
• Win Back the Crowd: Was Square's attempt to do this after the first game's mixed response due to No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom, adding in a more open world design, more sidequests, and more flexibility in the Crystarium earlier in the game. It didn't exactly take, in large part because the ending essentially renders any and all choices meaningless, making the openness feel artificial.
• The Woobie:
  • Yeul, or rather the many reincarnations of her. No matter which Yeul it is, she's born with the Eyes of Etro which lets her see the future and every time she uses her powers (which is often against her will), it slowly chips away at her lifespan and she dies young.
  • Serah, due to having the Eyes of Etro as well. And the journey she takes ends with her death.
  • Noel as well. He's from a time after the end of the human race and is the last human and his only goal is to save humanity from extinction, even if it erases him from time.

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