Famitsu impression on the playable demo:

The demo play segment, performed live on the PlayStation 3, showed a battle sequence. You can customize Lightning's weapon, shield, costume and abilities. These customizations can be stored and switched between as you battle. The combinations also have names -- Blast Witch, or Holy Liberator for instance -- and there seems to be a visual transformation sequence. All this makes the customization combination system sound like the Paradigms of past XIII games, but it's not clear if the naming is the same.

Like your typical FF game, the battle system has an ATB gauge which fills up as time progresses. But there are some action-style elements here, as you can now assign skills to buttons. Famitsu also says that you can assign some actions, including an evasion action, to a button.

Larger enemies appear to have multiple "break" states. The earliest such state is "Knockdown." This lets you steal from the downed foe. The final break state is Overclock. This freezes time. The demo play demonstrated Overclock by freezing a Behemoth that Lightning had launched into midair. Lightning then pummeled it with attacks.

As we reported earlier, the demo version was based off an alpha build. The textures and voices were all placeholder (the voices were from the development staff).

http://andriasang.com/con2jo/lightning_returns_demo_impressions/

I never said Final Fantasy XIII is terrible. It's a fine addittion in the series in my opinion. It's just vastly different.

fixed :D

I understand it was shown too early....that I think most of us have come to terms with. Yet that does not change that this is probably SE's MOST anticipated title on the horizon yet they seem determined to push it farther and farther away by throwing highly UNWANTED games at us.If FFVersusXIII was shown early ok, but as soon as XIII finished it should have been all about Versus.

Shown to early my ass. i dont buy that for second, SE really showed Versus in 06 just to not have it released till 13 or even 14?? They planned on making that game for that amount of time, yeah right. They just messed up its development, thats all.

After reading more I kind of see SE thinking. They have already captured the PS3  audience with FF, as sales are pretty good. But they want to make it more like skyrim and incorporate other things that appeal to a western gamer. So with that basically good PS3 and 360 sales=more money? (probably sell worse then XIII-2 though)

Lol, I was right! Wrote this when the article was posted.

Of the now 13 sequential Final Fantasy news articles, Versus no-show at TGS is now the most commented, followed by... Versus sketch!

It's like square is Oblivious to the game's popularity.

They shoulda did that with years ago with FF13, the fact they thought that game was supposed to be western like gameplay shows just how far their head is up their asses. IMHO this game doesnt sound too bad, there are some parts I hate, but the damage has been done. I'll be shocked if it does as good as 13-2 and im thinking no

you know, having read more about this game, I admit it does seem like it might not suck. I did like Lightning (was the only character in XIII I didn't hate other than Fang.) I still hate the paradigm system, but it did get better with XIII-2, so maybe this time it;ll be okay again. Either way, at the rate the series is improving (XIII was atrocious, XIII-2 was mediocre), this one should be 'good'. So yeah, I'll probably pick it up simply because I believe in three strikes.

Really?

It has just been downhill for me, and I don't see myself buying this one at all.

Maybe we'll switch places, and the world will end!  

But seriously, I do hate Final Fantasy XIII with a flaming passion, I didn't like XIII-2 either, but it was a huge improvement in quality.  Much as it may not seem so, I don't like being negative, so I'd rather be looking forward to a game and be optimistic about its prospects than hating it beyond all shadow of a doubt.   I still don't EXPECT it to be good, but it might be.