I was actually really offended my the way people are treating the winners. The amount of people treating not winning as a personal insult is aggravating. I've seen one guy railing on how digital art is a fad and it requires less skill in the comments after at least two of the winners were announced and it turned me off. There's a wave of people bashing the winners, deviantart, Nomura, and the like burring the congrats.
I find it a shame though, a lot of the best or more interesting costume designs came from people who just didn't have the skill to compete with the top artists. That said, I pegged Marga Donaire as a winner, and I remember looking at some fans listing off their favorite designs and that one came up consistently. The other two I didn't see coming.
Oh yeah, and I have to say, some of the weapon designs coming out of this were fucking amazing. It turned me into a twelve year old and made me like "omggg das so cool I want dat sword"
I was suitably aghast to hear them still recycling the soundtrack from FFXIII in this game. Don't get me wrong, the musical acumen of this series is a fine accomplishment in itself, and transitioned to great effect in FFXIII-2 whilst dovetailing cleverly with the eclectic mix of compositions from the guest composers. But to still be hearing the same tracks after two more games certainly doesn't hit the right note with me.
I think music was done actually quite interesting in this series post XIII, although I am in agreement that it feels like the original compositions showed up too much. The fact that music switched between not just between the four locations, but the areas, music changed between different times of day, sometimes during chaos infusions, and the mistrals. They made use of a rather extensive music selection.
I think the issue is that... maybe the music doesn't have the same impact? They aren't bad at all, some of them are excellent atmosphere music but compared to the earlier stuff it isn't as memorable. *shrugs*
Anyway I'm on NG+, tried using Japanese voices but I love the English Voice Actors better. Even if Ali Hillis isn't quite as good as her Japanese VA... I just like her as Lightning more. It's weird, her voice acting is unbalanced this time, there are moments her acting fantastic and moments when they were awkward (her interaction with Vanille and learning about the souls for example).
The sad thing is, there is replayability but... there's not much to do. I know that seems like a contradiction but I really feel like it's fun to do over, but there's not a huge amount of meat on the bones. I felt like XIII-2 was made for post game content, with extra endings, extra abilities, and likely not have done all the sidquests all the way through. Along with some new dialogue pop ups.
LR not so much. Because sidequesting tied in with stats I did pretty much 90% my first playthrough, and I thoroughly explored almost all the areas and had a day to spare to just wander. And because of the transfer of stats, the monsters and difficulties are a joke. I'm going to wait for the upgraded versions of Snow and Noel before I fight them, but since Caius doesn't change depending on the day and I fought him- I managed to beat him without even staggering.
I guess what I'm doing is completion stuff, getting all the hard mode garbs and upgrading weapons. I wish there was a challenging level that was dropped that was specifically for high level stats. I guess I shouldn't complain too much, I didn't fight Aeronite which I'm planning to this round because I sucked too much at staggering to do my first playthough.
Speaking of which, what weapons are worth upgrading? So far I'm putting my stats into Caius's sword and the Buster Sword but otherwise, eh.
