Japanese site 4Gamer has brought us an exhaustive new look at Final Fantasy XIII-2, Square Enix's time-travelling follow up to franchise's last single-player adventure. We've got details on the game's Xanadu Casino, chocobo racing, Temporal Rifts, and the city of Academia, where FFXIII character Hope Estheim hangs his hat these days.
First up is new info on Xanadu Casino, home to many of XIII-2's minigames. Screenshots show Xanadu as a flying city with a design that looks more like the world's craziest amusement park than your average casino. So far, only two gambling minigames have been confirmed, slots and chocobo racing.
Final Fantasy XIII-2's slots function exactly the same as those in the real world, with multiple paylines and varied payouts based on the symbols. If you're particularly lucky, you'll be able to win up to 50,000 coins in a single spin. There's no word on whether there will be a special cutscene when you lose all the party's money to your gambling addiction, but we're holding out hope.
Of course, any new Final Fantasy game worth its muster is going to have chocobos, the adorable little oversized birds that were first introduced in FFII. XIII-2 features an in-depth racing minigame, that allows you to select a chocobo based on its stats and control it throughout the race. Win, and you'll be able to collect some serious cash.
Chocobo races will be divided into five different divisions, and you'll have to do well in the lower ranks to make it into the more competitive (and more lucrative) events. Each chocobo will have a variety of stats governing its race performance, including burst speed, stamina, race points (which determine how many races a chocobo can enter before it has to retire) and special skills that can be activated during the race.
Before each race, you can outfit your bird with special items and choose which position it will shoot for in the pack. At the starting gate, you can time a button press to make it dash out of the gate and give your chocobo an early advantage. During the race, you'll be able to make your chocobo dash ahead of the competition by draining the boost meter. Timing will be important, as you don't want to use up your speed right off the bat and fall behind in the final stretch.
Next up are details on Final Fantasy XIII-2's Temporal Rifts (known as Time Labyrinths in the Japanese version), which punctuate the main story with new puzzle-driven gameplay. The Rifts will appear in a few different variations, all of which are centered around collecting crystals and escaping in order to resolve a time paradox in the real world.
In some instances, you'll have to navigate your way around a series of square platforms that disappear as soon after you've traversed them, meaning you'll need to plan ahead in order to grab all the crystals and make it to the exit. In others, you'll neeed to connect cystals of matching color and shape or navigate some tricky timing with a puzzle built around a spinning clock hand. The Temporal Rifts certainly sound like a novelty for the series, and gameplay puzzles should do wonders for keeping variety high throughout the experience.
FFXIII's 14 year-old wunderkind Hope is back, now ten years older and holding a prestigious seat at the Academy, a group looking to redevelop Gran Pulse. Along with his assistant Alisa, he's investigating the space-time anomalies that Serah is exploting to try to find Lightning and save the future of humanity. He resides in the gorgeous, high-tech city of Academia, which you'll be able to explore in all its neon splendor.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 launches December 15 in Japan for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. North America will be getting the game on January 31 of next year, Australia on February 2, and Europe on February 3.
