this game was a good news, bad news situation for anyone (like myself) who found XIII flawed with a lot of potential. the good news: they fixed a lot of the core issues that plagued XIII (i.e. your character death being a game over, lack of player self-determination/expression in paradigm choices until endgame, etc.). the bad news: the characters are rancid and the plot is even more indecipherable. would've probably liked this more than XIII if i gave even a fraction of a shit about any of the main characters.