Your wasting your time my friend, i find it funny how the defenders cannot find much concrete reasons as to why the game is good. Except for 1 or 2. If anyone thinks the script in this game is actually good then that tells me one of a few things. A) they wouldnt know a good script/story if it slapped their momma in the face and left a hand print. B) Maybe i dont know a good script and the game story was actual good( it wasnt) C) Maybe my standards or too damn high, after the PS1/2 eras when we were getting good to very good RPGs, to the point we were drowning in them.  D) The standards for "good" JRPG has just dropped. I mean if this is truly the "best" JRPG released on consoles then I have been a fool for years defending the genre and not listening to my dude bro friends when they tell me to stop playing the emo crap and play the Fallouts/Mass Effects, etc. Ironically thats what i have done and im pretty content.

I have no problem with change, Crisis COre and Tactics are different games and i love those. Hell TWEWY is as different a JRPG as you can get and it make FF13 its bitch. I didnt like the game because it was simply NOT FUN. Forget the mechanics. The game was boring to me, all i did was walk down halls and fight using a system that was decent at best. The story was boring, the villian was the worst villian ive seen in the history of ANY media, the characters was boring. Playing FF13 was like going to work and not getting paid. If you want to blow 60 bucks on a game that is just "decent" knock yourself out, I for one will not support mediocrity. A half assed game deserves half assed profit, that means i wait still the price drops in the bargain bin or used game store, whichever comes first

it doesn't work that way, and I highly doubt it will 'fix all the problems' we had with 13.  for one they said most of it is going to be the same, last I heard, and as long as it takes place in or around Coccoon, I want to part of it. that place was sterile and boring. if you want a game that's the polar opposite of 13, get vs13, it's gonna have open worlds, exploration, and alls orts of stuff that 13 didn't have. 

Of course you can still mess it up.  

I urgepeople not to buy stuff just on the promise that it's 'not as bad as last time'.  And judging by sales, Final Fantasy XIII was 'perfect', since it sold a lot and that's all that matters in the eyes of the shareholders.  "IT sold well, make more like that!" 

Yes, but I didn't love FF13, I just liked it enough that I am going to get the sequel.

I believe the reason FFXIII is "broken" and "restrictive" is because SE is trying to appeal to a newer audience (like you said) who aren't familiar with Final Fantasy and/or JRPGs. I think it's a perfectly viable move they're making but it comes with the cost of disappointing the hardcore JRPG fan. Whatever the case maybe, this is the direction SE is currently going and it is up to the individual customer to decide if they like their approach or not.

I don't know if you directed a lot of your points towards my earlier post, but I as a so called "defender" enjoy this game and find it good because I like the characters, the story (a bit cliche, but still nice), the battle system and the linearity. I'd like the ability to have greater customization, though I think XIII-2 will add on to that. I also never claimed FFXIII was the "best" JRPG this gen; I merely said that it was one of the better ones (which it is, the competition in the genre isn't too good on home consoles). It's all a matter of personal opinion and you can choose to buy it at the bargain bin but I don't find the game mediocre so I certainly won't be "blowing" 60 dollars on XIII-2. Heck, I've clocked in 100 hours in XIII so I definitely got my money's worth. Once again, it's your opinion and if you don't like it, don't buy it. Handhelds are still good for the genre like you said.

So people have wrong opinions then? Because there's tons of people who genuinely liked the game, myself included. And especially there's tons of people who loved the battle system. It can be improved, sure, but it's still nice. The game has its flaws but to some people, it doesn't make the whole game bad. In fact, you can't say a game is 'bad' as a fact when lots of people love it.

As of the 174th vote

64.94% were unimpressed by FFXIII
55.17% will buy FFXIII-2
18.97% are uncertain about it
about 50% of 18.97% who were uncertain will "probably" buy FFXIII-2, which is 9.485%
9.485% stands for the deviation in which people will or will not buy FFXIII-2
39.08% still believe in the development team behind FFXIII and FFXIII-2 despite being unimpressed of FFXIII

PREDICTION
Based on the 6.45m sales of FFXIII about 4.17m copies 3.56m
4.17m (+ -) 0.6m copies will be sold

I'm not sure if my math is correct though. But either way no matter what happens I think Square Enix will still make
a big profit off FFXIII-2 no matter how much we hate or love it.
Also, it's a small sample group so it won't be very accurate. Things like 360 vs PS3 owners and Region base might
be difficult to track in this case.

Please do correct me if you find something wrong or find a different conclusion.

no, there are no wrong opinions, but there are wrong facts.  If you like it, I'm honestly happy for you and I wish I could be there alongside you enjoying it as well. The fact of the matter is that the story was horribly told, the characters were flat , the game was linear and restrictive, and the combat system was deeply flawed and in some ways broken.  If you liked the story or had no problem with the way they presented it, awesome.  if you didn;'t mind the linearity or restriction, all the power to you, and if you can ignore the battle system's flaws then I applaud you.  that doesn't mean the game doesn't have these flaws.  

Its like the people telling me that Duke Nukem Forever wasn't a 'bad' game.  Yes it was.  when you have a game that fails or is well below acceptable quality in practically every way, it doesn't matter if people could 'get over it', it's still a bad game.   There are plenty of games I love that aren't that great (like 3D Dot Game heroes for example), but it doesn't mean I disgregard its flaws. On the flipside, there are a lot of games that are fundamentally flawed (FFXIII, Fallout 3) that people are fine with tolerating.  

Doesn't mean the game is good. 

I'll be waiting a long time before I buy it (if ever). XIII was a horrible game and flawed in so many ways. Hopefully XIII-2 will improve on those flaws and fulfill the potential the mythology holds, but I'm not holding my breath.

Yes.

There are 2 things I really liked in FFXIII that will play into FFXIII-2, the characters (or atleast some of them) and the story.