Right now I'm playing the Final Fantasy XIII-2 demo...
It's really really really REALLY great!
My only problem with what I saw of videos was the way battles were handled, I'm all for random encounters, but if they are, I want them to be mandatory like the older games, and I thought the mog clock was weird, not to mention using monsters in battle made it feel like a weird Pokémon clone thong...
HOWEVER
After playing it (Still playing it now, levelling up to fight Atlas head on, I'm that kinda guy, lol), my problems have vanished, it's so much fun! I've got a Gremlin levelled up to 12 so far, and its damage is pretty insane as a Ravager (It's magic is 139, lol) and I love being able to use different monsters for different paradigms (Even though this is the only monster I've levelled up, it's nice to have another healer in the party), it's not at all as cheesy or gimmicky as I thought, I'm really enjoying it, and the mog clock is pretty cool too once you start using it, basically, the faster you attack an enemy after it pops up (Your "random encounters" if you will, although you can run away from them), you get a pre-emptive attack and it gives you a buff (It always seems to be haste, maybe in the full game, the faster you do it, you get more buffs?), but these buffs do eventually wear off after a few turns in combat.
Oh, and something else... you can control a different party member! Serah isn't giving out the heals you want? Switch to her and manually heal with the spells of your choice, then switch back, or if she's a RAV and is using the wrong elemental spell (It rarely happens for me, but it has, lol...) switch to her and use the proper ones, same with Noel, he kept using Blitz instead of 2 attacks, I know it's AoE but it's not very strong and 2 attacks is actually faster if you're comparing DPS...
Basically, this game is going to be tons of fun when it's released, the battles seem so much better, they seem to flow more smoothly, especially when switching between paradigms, and your monster has a sort of Limit Break/Overdrive bar, which is pretty awesome! Basically it fills up each time your monster attacks, or you use items on it (There's items that boost the bar up), you go into a sort of QTE where you just have to press a few buttons (With the gremlin, you just press X/A and that's it, it inflates really big, flies into the air, and slams the floor, lol) and it can really help the battle in some cases... and something else about monsters... YOU CAN MAKE THEM WEAR HATS! :3, I've got a gremlin wearing a big orange hat and it looks so cool, lol... you can make monsters wear other clothes too, but I've not equipped any more yet, I just love the hat, lol...
If anyone had any doubts about XIII-2, saying it'd be as bad as XIII (Even though I LOVED XIII, it's one of my top Final Fantasy games, as I've said before...), then this will get rid of all those doubts, it's actually a really big improvement over XIII, the only thing that could let it down for me is that in the demo, the music isn't as great, and the graphics seem to be a tad... weaker, they still look better than 90% of games on the market, but they are a tad lower than on XIII, and the main thing you'll notice it on is the hair to be honest, it looks... weird.
... One more thing: Jumping.
God, I could be a reviewer or something, although my opinions may be a little biased at times :P