Final Fantasy XIII-2

XIII-2 has a decent premise with a great pace for a JRPG, wrapping up its time-travel story in thirty hours, includes a decent real-time role switching combat system and enough chemistry and development between our two leads to create enough substance to fill the time of the adventure alongside varied, yet recycled, locales and sometimes decent, sometimes dogshit, episodic missions. On those grounds, it is worth recommendation.

But just about every other creative decision made is so, so wrong. The monster training mechanic is so unclear and becomes so much of a hindrance I simply wish there were a permanent third party member, the time travel escapades have so many weird dalliances and tonal discrepancies that the raw narrative becomes a dog's breakfast, failing to meaningfully pick up steam until the final three hours when the stakes are finally raised, and the villain is one of the single worst in recent memory, having the motives of a woobie destroyer of worlds but the mannerisms of a chessmaster, without enough realistic reconciliation to not make him seem completely inept, leading up to what it still one of the worst endings of all time. Few games I enjoy and would recommend come with so many qualifiers, but so low are my expectations for JRPG pacing that XIII-2 just crawls over the par line for.