As for some of those cons, are you really saying that you want to be going into the menu all the time to apply potions, tents for mp, using items all the time?

I think this game was really streamlined for the action. They did away with a lot of useless menu selections and grinding, and just made it more fighting.

Furthermore, the battle system is just different. It seems as if it's just something you're not used to. Potions heal all members, don't need ot use as many items, etc. They turned the old attack and heal/item fights, into combinations, and fast paced strategy. For example, hitting enemies with magic makes their overload increase really fast, but then the overload bar goes down very quickly. Hitting them with normal attacks makes it go up slowly, but it also takes longer for the bar to drain away. So, much of the combat is hitting with magic and following up with physical attacks. This boosts their guage quickly, then caps it to degrading slowly when the physical attack hits last. Then you can judge whether the bar is high enough to go full magic and hit them so hard they overload, and then wail on them. That's what earns you top marks, which I think is a great little addition to the battle system. It's just a completely different system, and it's much faster, more streamlined, and I think much more enjoyable.

I don't want to give away the surprise.  Hell Froze over :P

I have no idea what that meant, I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

This...how does this work?  8 pros and 13 cons yet you give it an 8.8?  I'm just not following this logic. 

As for the battle system, yes it's different, but it's different in a bad way.  There's no depth (pick a paradigm, let the characters fight for you), there's no customization (no weapon/armor stuff, no stats to tinker with, only one weapon and one accessory), linear level growth (very little option to pick and chose abilities to learn, only able to chose what job you advance), punishment for things beyond your control resulting in unavoidably death (instant kill moves killing your party leader, death while in the paradigm shift animation).  It's all style, no substance.There is some timing to it all, but it requires precognition on the player's part, or a tedius trial and error gameplay method.  

different is good, this is a bad different when it comes to gameplay. that's not even discussing an almost absolute lack of exploration, lack of sidequests, lack of....anything.  it's pretty, the cutscenes are nice, but there's almost nothing to the game at all.  if I was to play through the game once again, it'd be the exact same experience since I can't control who's in my party, I can't explore, I can't try different character builds, I can't play any minigames, there are no side quests at all until chapter 11...

And why would I want to when the plot is poorly told, the characters bland, and the villain forgettable?  

I don't know what some people are talking about. I love FFXIII. I loved how it looked, i loved how the turn base system that they used, if felt natural to me. I loved the story and the character developments, i loved all of it.

I'm sorry am I the only one who noticed that theprof00 said ''the game isn't as linear as people make it seem'' There is literally a small section of the game (GP) that isn't linear. Of the 55 hours of my playthrough I would say maybe 45 hours were in spent in corridors with only 1 direction. I mean it's nearly impossible to miss any items in the game because well everything is right there!

After finishing FF12 Zodiac Edition today, I can safely say I have no idea what people mean when they say FF13 plays itself. In Zodiac I set up my Gambits and pushed the fast forward button assigned to the L1 button, and watched the game for 25 hours, whereas in 13 you couldn't just mash auto battle from start to finish. I literally watched FF12 play itself for over 20 hours. I think i'll stick with action RPGs if this is where 'turn based' RPGs are heading.

Took me 8 hours to get to Gran Pulse. No idea what you were doing on Cocoon for 45 hours.

I didn't say it took 25 hours to get to GP. Please read the post before replying. I said of my 55 hours game time about 45 were in linear sections. Maybe 10 or so in GP. Oh and if you reached GP after 8 hours then you must have been speed running and skipping cutscenes, you should perhaps even look into having the fastest time! Most people don't reach GP until the 20-25 hour mark.

I cringed a lot at his posts in general. I don't want to derail this thread going after his faulty points.