Translated from a german gaming magazine:

- Lightning is the only playable character. The amount of items she can carry is limited. The story of other well-known characters still shall be told, thogh

-The outcome of the story will not change, no matter how long you need to finish the game or what you do during it. You have a time limit to complete the story, making it impossible to 100% the game duing your first playthrough

-"Battles are controlled via pushing buttons, this way you don't have to pay attention to menu selections but you do have to keep a close watch over your ATB bar."

-Character development will only be possible by completing quests. You'll receive pieces needed for forging armor and points that affect the remaining time until the apocalypse

-No QTE's

-You'll be able to recieve deco-accessoires

Sources:

http://www.4players.de/4players.php/spielinfonews/Allgemein/32732/2122662/Lightning_Returns_Final_Fantasy_XIII%7CCharakterfortschritt_Chocobos_und_Co.html

 http://www.4players.de/4players.php/spielinfonews/Allgemein/32732/2122597/Lightning_Returns_Final_Fantasy_XIII%7CDetails_Spielzeit_Schnellreise_und_Co.html

Is it then an action-RPG?

If all of that remains true until launch day, it will prove the untold theory floating around some people's minds who are FED UP with this "Lightning Saga" that this final game is just a shell sent out to make a quick few bucks.

They should have stopped after the first game-XIII, for quality's sake.

All I have to say is that I sincerely hope LR is terrible, I hope it has terrible reviews, and I hope even the XIII fans (of which may constitute half of the Final Fantasy fan base, with the other half hating this trilogy) hate this game. Maybe then will the sales be dreadful and SE will quit screwing us over and get back to making quality games and not just visually pretty linear monstrosities.

And I say all of that for all of our sake as FF fans and gamers. Despite whether you genuinely liked XIII and it's sequels, the fact that SE has decided to drain this as far as it can and soaked up the $$$ with a cheap and overused product, is sad and needs to stop.

Where is Versus XIII? Where is Kingdom Hearts 3? Where is a playable version of FF XIV?

Those are 3 MAJOR titles that needed work and released before 3 freaking XIII "Lightning Saga" games.

Ladies and gentlemen: the incomparable Square-Enix.

So I was on holiday.. But this looks good for an iPhone game...

I enjoyed FF13, I enjoyed FF13-2, but this is looking like a step too far :(

Lightning can't honestly be the only playable character, I quite enjoy her as a main character, but she's no were near strong enough to lead the entire game story by herself :/

Sounds horrible as lightning was the worst main character in all the ones I have played. After playing 13 original and 13-2 though I already expected mediocrity.

One playable character also seems to be adopting a Western RPG style. The character was pretty bitchy so this will only work for those that liked the first two.

FF will be going all acton after this crap fest ends

Bloody hell, the amount of whining over this game ...

It's a Final Fantasy spin-off, it's supposed to be different in terms of mechanics. If that doesn't interest you then don't play it. Wipe your tears and find another game to play. If you don't like Lightening then don't play it. I thought Cloud was a boring shell of a character so I avoided all the FF7 media associated with it, but I didn't complain about it endlessly.

This kind of whining always puzzles the hell out of me, especially the pathetic hope that it's a bad game so that the people who do want more of the XIII story and like Lightening as a character are somehow punished. That's just really, really lame and incredibly sad.

sounds kind of monster hunter-esque interestingly enough.