What improved in quality for you?

I never expected this, I love FFXIII and you despise it, yet you seem more interested in the announced game than I do.

Like I said, I'm very optimistic and am going in with an open mind.  As for improvements, I thought the battle system was greatly improved (XIII had about a half dozen fatal flaws in the design, most of which were at least partially fixed in XIII-2, as well as the MAJOR one where the leader dies and you get game over'd), I thought the nonlinear game offered a lot more in the ways of exploration and sidequests (a huge selling point for me and my love of Final Fantasy).  I did think the writing was just as poor in XIII-2, but there was a lot more variety, a lot more things to do, and the battle system, though still flawed and unbalanced, wasn't the rage inducing crapfest that was XIII-2.  

Plenty of improvements where it matters, even though it took a few steps back in other respects. 

How was XIII-2 an improvement over XIII? I just don't see it folks. For everything that game "fixed" from the original game, it did something else just to negate it.

Can switch between party members, but stuck with only 2.
Bigger cities, but mostly just a stage prop with senseless missions sprinkled about.
New method of traversing, but its just a hub world select screen.
Story recaps for you in the beginning, but the story is so over convoluted and stupid.
Don't have to play with Vanille,Hope,or Snow, but stuck with an ok character(Noel), and a conparably worse character (Serah).

And the only thing I kinda liked about XIII(the lore) was butchered to peices with a left field TIME TRAVELING plot that un does everything the main characters did in the original just so they could shoehorn this story in in the first place.....



Uhg, I gotta stop talking about this game, it makes me angry and my head hurts every time.....

That is how I felt about XIII-2, and I can understand if someone only liked the lore in XIII. The lore is one of the things about XIII that I always defend.

Dude, side quests and a not-as-broken battle system make it better.  I didn't say it was good, just that it was better. 

This is exactly why I feel XIII-2 is a horrible afront to the name. They basically throw the lore out the window entirely. From what I gathered from XIII.....

-The Fal Cie are the equivilant to the titans in greek myth, all powerfull but lack a certain something that makes them whole. In this case, these demi gods are all powerfull but lack free will. They are forever bound to their individual cause. The most they can really do is manipulate other things to bring about a particular outcome.

-Humans on the other hand have free will, and as we all know, an unrequited ambition. Yet humans are powerless to the Fal Cie power. They are punished severely if they do not abide by their "focus" etc but the humans always have free choice.

-Bartandalus/Orphan manipulated this dynamic to their bidding. As fal Cie they seemed to envy human's free will. They were basically self sabataging their own systems in order to confront "the Maker" who made them the way they are. They basically pulled blasphemy by wanting to ask god "Why?". Hence they wanted to force enough souls through the portal to the afterlife(where the Maker supposedly exists)

-It appears that all the opposition between pulse falcie and cacoon falcie are just another manipulation on them to bring about their ultimate end. They create a distance between the humans, by basically making a class rift. Those who live comfortably in cacoon and those who suffer on pulse. All orchastrated to bring the point were two individuals could become strong enough and do serious damage to the floating city. This was Vanille and Fang. They "failed" to harm cacoon enough to destroy it but they planted seeds for a future plan.

-Anima(I am a bit confused myself how Anima's will ties into Bartandalus's) turns Serah into a l'cie but the funny thing was her only focus was to assemble the party that could get the job done. Because they cared enough for Serah, Lightning and Snow are pulled in. Seeing as Dahj was tasked with finding the alien l'cie(Serah at the time) this pulls Sahz in. Hope was just happenstance I presume. Only for all of them to fall into the trap and be turned into l'cie themselves. All this will and determination to save their loved ones is what drove them to complete their focus.

-Over all, it seems the Fal Cie suffer from abandoned child syndrom. It is almost like they are in a coma but are fully aware of what goes on around them. Its a bit sad when you think of them like that. By the end of the game, it seems like a bitter sweet ending similar to FFVII. The heroes technically saved the world but at a cost. I am pretty sure half of cacoon died that day regardless, so Orphan kinda got what he wanted.....I think?

-XIII-2's plot.......throw all of this away, Etro one of the Makers just appears, bestows power to manipulate time, blah blah. i just felt they skipped a whole mid point of them actually making contact with the other side, confronting god and asking them why they built the fucked up world they live in, etc. Uhg, whatever.

I agree that FFXIII-2 did NOT improve over FFXIII. Loved it still of course but FFXIII was the better game.

My biggest complaint about FFXIII-2 was the monster party member. Ugh so useless.

Many people hate XIII's story, so it's good to see you like it. XIII-2 took a dump on XIII's story though, it was completely uninvolved with XIII and the only time it was involved it contradicted something from the first game or made the events in the first game feel meaningless. The new game won't fix any of that, so I'm not buying it.

I feel so out of the loop. I mean, I knew about all this FFXIII lore and stuff, but I never paid close attention to it, mostly because I couldn't be bothered. When you hate a game, you don't spend much time investigating the subtleties.

One thing I do know is that the lore is deep and nuanced, but the story presented in the game was horrible.

Forevercloud's post basically is the story. Anything in particular you really hate?