Squeenix bosses have this insane idea that trying to make games more "westernised" will give them a larger market, completely missing the fact that their core audience in the west want games of a Japanese flavour.

Haven't played 13-2, but 13 most certainly does not have too complicated a battle system.

FFXIII-2 is probably my 5th or 6th favorite final fantasy, falling short of some of the older ones, but I disagree with those things sort of.

I don't mind the quicktime events.

Most of them are either feral links (which have been quicktime events before FFVIII, or FFIX at the start with that play). instead of a custcene they're somewhat interactive, if you don't press anything they get squished and subsequently lol. Essentially, instead of watching, you get to press something, I think they should have made them better, but I thought it was a neat addition.

The battlesystem's imo were all more enjoyable for X,X-2,12,13,13-2. The management Job/Materia/Junction systems aren't necessarily better in my view. But, again, I'm not a fan, of necessarily traditional battle systems. I like Trails, Star Ocean, TWEWY, Resonance (despite being repetetive), Persona, the newer FF's more than older ones.

The dialogue choices I like... They did a poor job. However, there are some comedic consequences you wouldn't necessarily get. Also, I don't like that it takes you to a new screen unlike in ME. They've actually had this before where it did nothing, like FF7,FF8,FF9,FF10 though the extent was really small, and like a two word reply.

In short I like the additions but they could have been implemented better. Not that I'm all FF fans.

Doesn't sound much different from XIII actually, except that in the other games you actually didn't spend most of the game spamming the "Auto Attack" option.

When I say complicated; I don't mean too difficult for the player to understand - I mean convoluting it with an interface doesn't enrich the gameplay experience and actually only really succeeds in making something much more irritating to use.

If I remember correctly, FF13 did something similar to FF13-2. It forced the player to do a lot of unnecessary things (like paradigm shifts, setting up weird combos and such) when a more simplistic Battle interface could have actually provided a much richer variety of strategic options; Dragon Quest 9 is a good example of how a more simplistic battle system can accomplish far more than the more complicated and actiony ones used in many recent RPGs. I hate using this word, but it feels like "gimmicky" mechanics.

Why must you use that button, you can switch default command to ablility. It's too prevalent in the menu, when you switch to abiliities in the options they should take that button away. You don't necessarily use auto-aim (atleast auto aim) etc which essentially is it's equivelent.

I agree with badgenome.

Who else came across this response in Live Trigger (when Noel asks what relationship does Snow have with Serah)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywMHnJJ-KpM&feature=related

I just couldn't believe the dev put that kind of a response in, but at the end of the day thats why even though the story of XIII-2 is crap I liked it more than XIII's, it makes fun of itself and can be funny/parodical at times.

Some other live trigger responses made me laugh a lot too especially Mog's, "I like serah more than Noel, kupo" & then in Bresha again I think Mog asks someone for money or something and they refuse and he says something like "humans are evil, kupo"

If only Mog didn't have that annoying voice, I would've found him more adorable.

Which is another reason why I dislike the spin-offs, they've changed the original game and it's story/outcome. That said, Turks were in it enough, you fought then on 4 or 5 occations and they were central to a lot of story line. I think they mean graphical achievements to meet the demands of the audience, although many just want to see the characters and story played out in a more realistic way, no the blocky manga style (even if that is part of the character). The only way they will please everyone is to keep enverything but the graphics the same, which in itself seems plausable. Although, how many CG scenes were there in the game?

Thanks for the words about the DS games though.

Thanks for the info.

I don't care for the speed of the battle system and don't like the feeling I get when playing it without the auto-battle. When playing FFXIII I tried to do everything manually and I felt like I had to rush my decisions. I don't like that feeling.

While I am still going to get FFXIII-2 (As I have done with every single FF), I still would have preferred the slower paced action ala FFI-X, where I could take my time during battle and nothing ever felt rushed.

Hmm, I see that's understandable. maybe they should have put a "wait" in atb's like in older FF's .