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Final Fantasy XIII-2: Lightning and Lt. Amodar Review


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On 02/14/2012 at 03:00 PM by Julian Titus

This isn't the way you extend the life of an RPG with DLC.
RECOMMENDATION:

It's pretty cool to get some more humans into your party, and the price for this content is low. If you're cool paying for two new party members, this can be a fun way to tackle any of the quests you left open after completing the game.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is the first game in the series to feature downloadable content, and the Lightning/Amodar battle is the very first piece of content to be released. While it’s great to see Square Enix taking steps into a new space, it’s clear that they need to do a little more research before the next DLC comes out.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 had a terrible ending. There’s just no way around that. Any player that finished the game is surely chomping at the bit to know what comes next, and to have at least a few questions answered. This piece of DLC does nothing to answer those questions, and really adds very little to the game. It’s simply a battle at the Coliseum against Lightning and Lt. Amodar, a character that is a new addition to the series, as far as I can tell. The description of this add-on content states that Lightning and Amodar can be added to your party once defeated, but that’s a bit of a misleading statement.

When you first download the DLC and fire up the game, the Historia Crux takes you right to the Coliseum. This isn’t the Coliseum in the same era that you encounter during the main game; it’s a new spot on the Historia Crux. Once you talk to the Arbiter of Time you’ll get a spiel about how you can fight powerful adversaries here and add them to your party. However, the only battle you can select is the Lightning/Amodar fight—this is the only addition in the DLC.

There’s a quick cutscene before the battle, but you’re told that this isn’t the real Lightning, but merely a puppet with a soul plucked from the timestream. This explains why Lightning is in her old outfit, as opposed to the new armor she sports during the main story. At the midpoint of the battle, Lightning is joined by Amodar; while the fight wasn’t a huge challenge for me, it’s clear that this fight is meant to take place after you’ve finished the game or leveled up quite a bit doing side quests.

Lightning and Amodar are considered “monsters” in XIII-2. It’s a little off-putting to scan them with a librascope and see that they are “tameable.” With that in mind, defeating them doesn’t guarantee that they are in your party—they actually have a pretty low drop rate. I had to fight the battle four times to get Lightning, and an additional two to pick up Amodar. The battle is pretty epic…the first time, anyway. But having to grind the same boss fight just to get two additions to your party is kind of annoying.

Once you get them, though, you’re in for a treat. Both Lightning and Amodar have very high stats, even at level 1. They are considered rank 5 monsters, so it takes the most expensive monster components to level them up, and in large quantities. It will take a lot of farming to boost them as far as they can go, but even at the outset, they do massive damage. Adding them to your party gives you a huge advantage, and I played a couple of the alternate missions with them, dominating all comers.

But at the end, this is all you get. No new weapons, no new story elements. You don’t even get any new outfits for Serah and Noel, because those are slated to be completely separate DLC. The price for this content is low, but what you get feels like something held back from the final release. I love the idea of extending my Final Fantasy adventure with additional content, but I expect much more than this.

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