Caius is still a mystrey, he seems to be the one who created all the conflicts in the time line , he "changed the prophesy ". By changing the future he  changed some events in the past ( Lightning disappearance ).

The whole point is that they want to change the fate of the world by changing some critical events throughout the time .

Yes, the plot get confusing sometimes , you need to keep focused

Got the game this morning (shopto.net delivered it early).

What is there to say about the game? Well I'm glad I picked it up, haven't had this much fun in an FF since X-2.

With the plot, I'm choosing all the stupid options in the Live Trigger, it makes the plot hilariously funny at times. I have very little faith in the story of a Toriyama game so I decided to make the plot as ridiculous as possible for me so that at least it'll be funny.

When you get the live trigger from Noel asking about Snow I dare you to pick "Snow was a good friend", the consequence is hilarious.

I enjoying the game very much(more than XIII) it's pretty good, areas seem more open the battle system has been tweaked(in a good) the only thing that rubs me the wrong way are the monsters are your 3rd party member...it rubbed me the wrong way in ToS2 but S-E has done a better job this time around. I like the crystarium system in XII-2(though is there a level cap? I only played for about 8-9 hours yesterday and Noel and Serah are already in their 50's)

only thing bad is the story a little hard to follow since you're jumping between timelines

TOMORROW!!!

Forgot to mention character, so far I'm finding Noel really really good, very likeable. Mog & Serah are annoying, but Serah is getting less annoying now, still don't understand who in their right minds would make her a teacher.

Really? I don't like Noel at all. Mog, in the other hand... I like.

A little late to the show, but getting mine this friday.

also I must say S-E did a brilliant job with the collector's edition's boxing(US), very well done!!!

How did you get your copy so soon!? Thought you were British, my bad.

Nice to know that you don't hate it though, the fan response has been great so far yet the review scores are a lot worse. What the fuck is up with that?

Honestly, I bet a lot of the backlash is simply becuase of the public's hatred towards XIII.  I know I was prepared to hate it regardless of quality, but at the same time it's got a lot of improvements.  storytelling is still dismal, characters still pretty shallow and bland, and I'm still not a fan of the battle system, but I don;t hate anything yet. they fixed the one key problem with the battle system (if the main character dies, you jsut take over another character) so now it's simply a fair matter of personal opinion.  I also like the nonlinearity, I like having options to chose where I go next, what I do, and how much of the activities I want to do. 

While I'm still not sold it is, on its own, a good game, it's definitely leagues better than XIII.