Final Fantasy XIII had the narrative and difficulty as its high points (bear in mind we're comparing this to XIII-2). Final Fantasy XIII-2 has the RPG stuff like with the kitchen sink thrown in, better-written characters in Noel and Caius, and the player can dictate the pacing of the story depending on when they want to unlock new areas.
Overall, outside of Noel (who is one of my favourite protagonists since Balthier because he's so snarky) and the music, I'm not really feeling super-enthusiastic about FFXIII-2. I was kind of bored while playing parts of it, and found myself not really being wowed by a lot of its content. I ended up getting the plat because of completion, and ended up playing the game for the sake of getting the plat.
I do wish--and I didn't want to compare it to Xenoblade in the OT--that the game had a Quick Transport system like Xenoblade did. Chocobos are fine and all, but since playing Xenoblade, I really wanted that when I started doing fetch quests. It was handled nicely in the Steppe, but it could have been implemented in other areas too.
Oh, and the quest system is not really notable. The only good quests in XIII-2 were the string of quests involving the lost Squad in one area, and the rest of the game's quests should have been integrated like that. A lot of the quests were fetch quests in general, and didn't really let you learn about the world or its people. Those types of quests are what I enjoy more, not quests for the sake of quests like XIII-2 seemed to implement.
The puzzles which seemed exclusive to one particular area are stupid. Whoever decided that that was a good idea should have a talking to. I didn't think the clock puzzles were awful, but towards the end, they were getting super-stupid, lengthy, and had timers attached to them to boot. Again, it felt like they were throwing things at the wall to see what stuck and what didn't so they could make another FF game with the stuff people liked from both FFXIII and FFXIII-2.
Lip-synching for some of the lines in the real-time cutscenes was off. The character models in XIII-2 weren't as polished as the ones in XIII. Some of the NPCs were hideous. Honestly, this game is pretty much a technical graphical downgrade from FFXIII outside of the CG cutscenes. I don't really notice stuff like technical graphics in a general sense, but putting FFXIII and FFXIII-2 side-by-side, it's very easy to see which one had more effort put into it. Not to mention that the framerate and loading times in some of the areas are absolutely abysmal.
I didn't like it a ton and it didn't blow me away (I wish it had in the graphics/art direction department), but I didn't dislike it either. Final Fantasy XIII-2 complements Final Fantasy XIII well. Whether that is a good thing or not is up to you. I don't think either game out of the two stand out at all. Like with FFXIII, I feel a little indifferent towards FFXIII-2, and even moreso because (vague ending spoilers)
. But I don't want to strike it down because Noel is great, and the improved battle animations are great.
Also, the spoilers thread has even more of my ranting about how they handled time travel in the most asinine way (I really disliked how they handled time travel), and the narrative in general. The narrative isn't confusing in the least; it's just dumb sometimes. But perhaps it's because I don't go for these sorts of narratives in RPGs that I don't really care for either XIII's or XIII-2's narratives at all.