The second in the line of games of the form “numbers with further numbers appended to the end” that started with FFX-2, XIII-2 is coming out in a few days. I’m probably going to pick it up. For all its (terrible) flaws, I admit I saw potential in XIII. Everything about that game was “great idea, atrocious execution.” The paradigm/optima system was actually really fun in some of the harder fights, but could do with some extra interaction and polish; the story was decent but got marred by characters not explaining what they were talking about exacerbated by an incomplete datalog.
Square says they’ve listened to the complaints about the battle system, and implemented them. I haven’t really been following the game, so I don’t know much. I do know they added quicktime events to some attacks – which I don’t really mind, I’ve never really had issues with quicktime events so long as they’re used as either a core gameplay mechanic or so that you can initiate their use; I don’t find quicktime events as wikipedia described them for this game any different from Timed Hits/Action Commands from the various Mario RPGs.
The story apparently has multiple endings, sidequests out the arse, open fields, and time travel. So I guess they tried to fix “linear.” This could end up being good or terrible, depending on how much time-stream dicking around you need to do to unveil sidequests or get the best ending, I suspect it won’t be much more robust than Chrono Trigger after all is said and done.
I can’t say I’m looking forward to it, but it should be interesting to see how it pans out at least.