The development team wanted to exceed Final Fantasy XIII in every aspect while making the story's tone more dark and mysterious than the previous game.

Instead of accessing stores at save points like in XIII, the player can purchase items from a character named Chocolina, who is found throughout the game.

In this mode, the enemy has lowered defense and is easily interrupted, and some may even be launched into the air, preventing them from attacking and stopping their ATB gauges from replenishing.

[3] The Paradigm system allows the player to program six different roles, which the characters can assume to perform certain formations in battle in response to specific conditions.

The system consists of constellation-style representations of the character's weapons and tamed monsters, made up of small and large crystal nodes, which can be accessed from the start of the game.

[7] In XIII, one of the fal'Cie—a god-like race—transformed a team of six people into l'Cie (servants of the fal'Cie with magical powers and a 'Focus'—an assigned task to be completed within a time limit).

The two main playable characters are Serah Farron (Laura Bailey/Minako Kotobuki), Lightning's sister and the second narrator, and Noel Kreiss (Jason Marsden/Daisuke Kishio), a young man originally from the distant future.

New characters include Caius Ballad (Liam O'Brien/Hiroshi Shirokuma), the game's primary antagonist; Paddra Nsu-Yeul (Amber Hood/Mariya Ise), a seeress possessing the all-seeing Eyes of Etro;[11] and Alyssa Zaidelle (Kim Mai Guest/Yōko Hikasa), a young girl who works as an assistant to Hope.

As part of Lightning's transfer to Valhalla, she was erased from the fall of Cocoon onwards (making everyone except Serah forget her being with them on Gran Pulse), and paradoxes have erupted throughout time, warping the timeline.

While journeying to 5 AF to resolve a paradox on Cocoon, they meet and help Alyssa, an Academy member and survivor of the Purge, a massacre by the Sanctum at the beginning of Final Fantasy XIII.

Before being trapped, Serah meets the spirit of Yeul, who explains that she is the seeress of Paddra, continually reincarnated throughout history, while Caius is her immortal guardian, gifted with Etro's own heart.

[18] When the pair return to Academia in 500 AF, where Vanille and Fang have been rescued from the collapsing pillar and the new Cocoon, named "Bhunivelze", has risen, Serah dies in front of Noel and Hope from the shock of the future changing.

If the player completes all optional parts of the game, they are shown an additional scene in which Caius is on the throne, declaring that the goddess is gone for good, and that Yeul and he can begin a new life freed from their "curse".

[23] The game was officially announced at the Square Enix 1st Production Department Premier in Tokyo in January 2011, and released on December 15 the same year.

[22] The troubled development of Final Fantasy XIII that had been caused by the simultaneous creation of the company-wide engine Crystal Tools gave reason to rethink the production process for high-budget games at Square Enix.

For Final Fantasy XIII-2, the team consulted the European subsidiary Eidos to more closely adapt a Western approach to game development.

[24] Furthermore, unlike its predecessor, XIII-2 was not entirely developed in-house; Japanese studio tri-Ace was contracted to help out with aspects of the game design, art and programming.

Concept videos and frequent test playing during production helped constantly engage the staff and keep to the original vision of the game.

The developers intended to address these criticisms with the sequel by adding the Historia Crux system, numerous sidequests from non-player characters, and the casino minigame area.

[4] Environments were made more explorable and the artists were given more freedom to include their own ideas in the game's locations, in order to rectify the shortcomings of the more artificial seeming settings in Final Fantasy XIII.

[4] For the structure of side quests and some other aspects such as the abundance of chocobos and the more open environment, the team drew inspiration from Rockstar San Diego's Red Dead Redemption.

[29] Emi Nagashima, also known by her pen name Jun Eishima, had written novellas for Final Fantasy XIII and was consulted early on in development to help come up with the plot for XIII-2.

[29] Based on the much darker tone of Final Fantasy XIII-2 compared to its predecessor, Kamikokuryo decided on surrealism as the main theme for the graphics.

[27] The works of Salvador Dalí and Giorgio de Chirico were used as visual references and helped Kamikokuryo strike a balance between photorealism and fantasy-like surrealism.

[37][38] Yusuke Naora took charge of Serah's, Noel's and Caius' costumes, while Hideo Minaba worked on Yeul, Alyssa and the adult version of Hope in the same capacity.

[51] Post-release downloads also included "Final Fantasy XIII Lost Report", which offers a look back at XIII's story through the perspective of non-playable characters from the game, and three downloadable scenarios for other characters: "Perpetual Battlefield", which reveals Snow's fate;[52] "Heads or Tails", which shows how Sazh came to 500 AF Academia;[53] and "Requiem of the Goddess", which shows Lightning's struggle against Caius and explains how she became crystallized in the main story's ending.

Famitsu editor Ranbu Yoshida said that "it feels like a very different game from its predecessor" and that "it's easy to lose yourself in changing and redoing areas you've previously finished".

Assistant editor Norihiro Fujiwara added that "the setting and presentation is fantastic, and the issues people brought up with the first game—its linearity, its lack of meaty gameplay—are a thing of the past.

[5] The Edge review, which was harsher on the game than most others, also found it to be too easy, which combined with what they saw as poor subquests and a lack of effort put in some regions made the gameplay uninteresting.

[76] In late August 2012, a teaser site was unveiled in preparation for the Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Event, titled "A Storm Gathers", promising a "new direction for the saga of key character Lightning".