Gotta love the necktie. It classes up the rest of the outfit.

After you save the world and vanquish evil, what’s your next destination? For the cast of 2010’s Final Fantasy XIII, the answer is to jump right back into the fray and do it all over again — but this time, with side quests. And a refined battle system. And well, simply more stuff.

Just a few years after the conclusion of FFXIII, the first game’s pink-haired heroine has gone missing — spirited away to another dimension, leaving her younger sister Serah to carry on with rebuilding the towns and cities that were decimated during the last game’s ending. Alongside Serah is newcomer Noel Kriess — transported from the future to fight the new mysterious encroaching enemies, who’re roaming the wilds of New Bodhum and beyond.

When the lights...go down...in the city...

While various folks from FFXIII will make cameos throughout the sequel, this is really Serah, Lightning, and Noel’s story. Appearances by a now-bandanna-less Snow(!) and a grown-up Hope will definitely figure into the storyline, but according to game producer and Square Enix senior vice president Yoshinori Kitase, they aren’t playable and “you can’t level them yourself,” even if they do participate in battles and the game itself from time to time.

And it’s Serah and Noel that we spend all of our time with during a recent hands-on demo that showed off the game’s faster, more streamlined combat system as well as a peek at a retooled Crystarium — the menu in the game that lets you spend the Crystogen points earned in battle to determine the skills and stats in your party’s arsenal. Character classes that are essential in swapping between Paradigms in battle still include familiar roles like Ravager (capable of casting offensive magic) and Sentinel (defenders), but FFXIII-2’s Crystarium allows you clearer paths in customizing each of them to your liking. Kitase and his team felt that in the last game, there were too many similarities in each character’s capabilities once you’d maxed their abilities — and that’s something that the new Crystarium will address by providing a much more varied end result once you’ve poured a good amount of Crystogen points into each character.

No whammies, no whammies...STOP!

Another issue fueled by gamer feedback that FFXIII-2 hopes to tackle is the linear feel that choked the original game throughout its early chapters. This time out, you’ll have the option to take on a large number of side quests from nonplayable characters wandering throughout the world. Some of these civilians will simply want to chat with you — which may prompt some multiple-choice conversations, though your choices simply flesh out the storyline rather than affect which of FFXIII-2’s multiple endings you receive. But most of your interactions with folks roaming the game will offer up quests that you can take on, allowing you to explore dungeons and wide expanses of New Bodhum during anything from fetch missions to battles against optional bosses that’ll tax your Paradigm-swapping skills.

And some of these combat scenarios will work your dexterity and tactical abilities. In a fight against a sky-high creature called Atlas, having to time your class-swapping (in order to properly balance healing with enemy-staggering attacks) is tough enough. But add in FFXIII-2’s new features like quick-time-event–style Feral Links and Cinematic Action and you have your hands full. The result feels even faster than the battles in FFXIII and demands a good amount of skill in the game’s tougher fights.

Let's battle!

Even with this refreshed approach to the main meat of the game, we found ourselves charmed most by the little details. The ability to tame monsters to join your party, then use items to level them up has its charms — as does a wandering female merchant named Chocolina who dresses like a, yes, Chocobo.

There’s still plenty of mystery surrounding exactly what’s going on in FFXIII-2’s storyline to keep us on the hook — and combined with what we’ve seen so far, we’re hoping it all dovetails into an epic adventure befitting a series already so packed with them.

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PUBLISHER: Square Enix  •  DEVELOPER: Square Enix  •  MULTIPLAYER: No  • RELEASE DATE: January 31, 2012  •  FOR FANS OF: Pink hair, Japanese RPGs, juggling Paradigms