After the atrocious first entry in the "XIII series", I layed my hands upon XIII-2 and oh boy, I was surprised. Unlike its predecessor, this feels like a JRPG. You can travel freely and are not restricted to a one-way street anymore. You get cities with NPCs roaming around. The battle system is not much deeper but with the new monster system, they added a cool feature. Unfortunately next to one active monster you only get two characters, Serah and Noel. Serah is sweet and lovely just like in the first game but Noel is your standard cookie-cutter JRPG hero with some neat details here and there. But one of the most important additions to the XIII series: The battle doesn't end when your active characters die. This time around it swaps to your other character and only if that one dies as well it is game over. So you have some time to resurrect your fallen party member. Too bad there are some mega attacks again that insta-kills your whole squad when you're lower than 70%-80% hp. But as far as I can say this is only in the last boss battle. Also, the grinding is less noticeable here because you have to backtrack every now and then. The problem is that at one point in the story you have to have enough keys to open portals to (what I thought at first) optional areas. Looks like some of them contain very important objects. And since you never know to what area a new portal will lead you to have to get lucky or own all those precious keys. And they are well hidden at times. All around the world are translucent objects and containers you can reveal with your Moogle. And oh boy they are hard to spot sometimes. Unfortunately, most of the side quests rely on this mechanic so I hope you have good eyes. But at least it got neat side quests. (I look at you FFXIII Archylte Steppe). Once again all levels look great with different looks and feel. They get rehashed but it's okay considering the plot. And yes story. Although it is muuuch better than Final Fantasy XIII´s mess of Fal'Cie, L'Cie and more it is still a tad convoluted. But because the story is sprinkled nicely in between the chapters and different areas I pretty much enjoyed it. The whole game just feels more complete and well thought out. Somehow the battles feel more fun, although they are practically random encounters. And the music is also fantastic again. A tad too much singing though but most of the time it fits. XIII-2 is in fact a huge step up from the first game but not a perfect Final Fantasy game. If you want to catch up on the franchise I would recommend skipping FFXIII.