I'm also not planning to get the game at full price. Toriyama doesn't convinces me anymore, and I don't want to spend full money first week for something that's far away from being a masterpiece. If I knew I would expect normal-quality FF stuff (aka, despite the flaws something AWESOME) and not a 5-8/10 game that's supposed to be "better in everything than a main FF game" (lol), things would be different. I don't have much money to spend neither with the world's economy as it is, so I'll wait until the prices drop, and still will only buy it because it seems to be a fun game, and because I'm a Final Fantasy fan. Or else I wouldn't bother, really.
For FFXIII, I still had that thought, "ok, a lot of FF games are flawed, but they compensate it with a lot of hidden depth, worthwhile moments and lots and lots of excellent world immersion". Afterall, that's what I felt from games like FFVIII, FFX and FFXII. In the end, I absolutely loved immersing into their fictional worlds, replaying and abusing the gameplay mechanics, etc. I bought FFXIII under the assumption I would get a similar experience, but what I got was a 20 hours tutorial game without depth, with little to no immersion, with little to no pace diversity, with bad and dry character growth systems, all for the sake of a story that ranged from amateur/ mediocre drivel to downright insulting. So yeah, with this game I got the confirmation that Toriyama shouldn't even be there; he has no storytelling skills, and he has no game design skills.
FFXIII-2's demo was interesting, but the "town" there was dry, and I heard most of the other towns in the game are not much different. I have been getting the feeling that Toriyama simply threw a lot of features that fans asked for (or didn't), without bothering to understand how to implement them to take full potential of them, and several reviewers confirmed this out. I already expected it solely based on how shallow Toriyama's decisions were for the original, and +quantity =/= +quality. The best things about the battle system were taken out (the usefulness of most roles and the importance of chain breaking), as the battles in the demo were pretty mindless and monotonous. The random encounters annoyed me out, and I felt it was overall an unnecessary feature. The character growth system, however, was addicting, finally! And the sidequests were as well, and the maps decent. I know I'm going to have fun overall, if not only because of this, but I won't pay 60€ for this product, especially when/ if I can get it for 19€ in a few months, and only because it's a FF game, and I'm a FF fan.
