You know that thing I wrote a while back about Famitsu’s handing out 40 out of 40 games scores being rare? Yeah, maybe not so accurate—at least not at the rate the 40s have been coming lately.
The closely watched Japanese games magazine gave Final Fantasy XIII a 39 out of 40 back in 2009, but it’s apparently scored the sequel—launching on December 15 in Japan and January 31 stateside—a perfect 40 out of 40. That means each of the magazines four reviewers gave the game a perfect 10 out of 10.
That makes it the third game this year Famitsu’s awarded a perfect score. The prior two were The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
According to Japanese gaming news-watcher Andriasang, the reviewers say the game remedies what was problematic in the original (presumably complaints about the game being over-linear, or that it lacked intermediary points to break from the action, e.g. towns) and that “there’s a lot of gameplay to be found.”
Final Fantasy XIII-2 adds a time travel mechanic where your choices can alter the actual game world, a tweaked version of FFXIII’s realtime battle system, the ability to tame monsters, a “Mog Clock” mini-game that determines how battles begin, and dialogue options that shift each time the game’s played.
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