Still yearning for more Final Fantasy XIII-2 news? Famitsu posted an article today containing more in depth details of the monster-Crystarium growth system, additional information about the many things you can do with your monster collection, and tidbits on the world, story and the Historia Crux system.

Though you will still be spending CP when developing your playable characters on the Crystarium, it will be different in the case of the monters as they have their own Crystarium growth system. Items will be used to advance through the monsters’ Crystarium and these items can be received after winning a battle or can be bought in different shops. The abilities you can unlock will depend on the item you will use. Furthermore, as the level of the abilities gets higher, the rarer the required items will be.

A better look on the Crystarium and a few cutscene shots can be seen below, released by Square Enix recently this week.

As seen in the battle screenshot above, a Flanbanero is shown wearing sunglasses. Cool, huh? Not only you are able to add decorations to your collected monsters, but you will also have the ability to name them.

Inheriting monster abilities, which was previously revealed, is indeed another cool addition to the monster collection system. There is a consequence though, as the monster you have chosen for the others to inherit its abilities will be sacrificed. As for the monsters that inherit, they may acquire a new set of abilities if the monster they inherited from has a different paradigm role than theirs. There will be 4 major types of these abilities: command ability, auto-ability, special/characteristic ability, and resistance. The command and auto abilities can only be inherited from a monster with the same paradigm role as the monster that inherits.

Moving on to the other tidbits, 2 colored gates of the Historia Crux system are shown in the article with each having different ways of getting unlocked. Blue colored gates will need general Wild OOPArts items to be unlocked while the yellow colored gates require specific keys to do so. Regarding the story, it is revealed that Caius used to be Noel’s mentor and friend, although the reason of their conflict is yet to be revealed. The “Augustia Tower” is also introduced, which is a building built by the Academy in order to work on a project. Said project is not described in the article and is also yet to be revealed.

As the game will come out in less than a month in Japan and a month and a half in the rest of the world, expect to see more info to be released in the future!

Many thanks to forum member Ectis for finding this information.

Source: Andriasang