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Confusing? You bet.

Even the title of Final Fantasy XIII-2 is telling gamers outside the core fan base to stay away. Sadly, the actual game doesn’t do itself any favours either as it’s often impenetrable, and will likely not appeal to anyone other than JRPG loyalists*.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 starts off with FFXIII protagonist Lighting battling a purple-haired baddie in a mysterious city outside of time. Soon we switch to Lightning’s little sister Serah (who spent most of the first game as a crystal statue) who meets up with new hero Noel three years after the end of Final Fantasy XIII. Serah finds out that something is altering and destroying history, so she and Noel need to dive into a time machine, sorry, I mean dive into the Historia Crux, to fix the paradoxes.

First, the things FFXII-2 fixes from FFXIII:

If FFXIII got ragged on for anything, it was how painfully and unrelentingly linear it was for the majority of its playtime. The first ten chapters of the game mostly entail driving your characters along a very straight path. FFXIII-2‘s Historia Crux attempts to alleviate that, and as such it’s probably one of the areas where the game is most improved over its predecessor.

Once you unlock the Crux, areas representing the world in different eras open to you. Completing these levels unlocks even more eras which can be tackled in a relatively non-linear order. Afterward you can go back to an area you’ve completed and try it again to find all of its secrets.