If you are a seasoned Final Fantasy fan, Final Fantasy 13 and FF 13-2 might not cut the cake for you.
We've come away from obvious elemental differences, and natural looking enemies, to futuristic machina fights. This might just be the progression of civilisation as time goes by, but still, I feel this might be an issue for hardened fans.
The graphics are pretty nice, lovely definition in HD, and the landscapes and back grounds are surprisingly detailed.
Similar to Final Fantasy 13, the music is kind of rocky, and this is one of the first FF games to actually use vocal tracks in the soundtrack. Each areas music fits it quite nicely, and some boss battles have unique battle music, one which sounds like a cross between Korn and Black Sabbath, which was a bit weird.
The game itself I find is considerably easier than FF13, and I don't think this is a bad thing, since I found FF13 quite laborious at times.
You're in a third person view, usually chasing your companion.
A nice little touch to this game is though you usually only have one other human companion, you can recruit monsters to join your team, and then incorporate them into your battle paradigms, and level them up as if they were a regular member of the team, only using items instead of CP (crystarium points).
The levelling up system for human characters is via the Crystarium. After you have won a battle, you are awarded Crystarium points, which is an 'EXP' equivalent. It's really simple to use, and you can use those to level your characters up in their various roles.
Roles come in handy when you are strategically battling monsters. If you want an all out offensive, you can set up your team to all be in damage dealing roles, or if you are struggling, you can set it up so you have one 'tank', one 'saboteur who will cast debuffs on the enemy, one strategist who will case buffs on your team, and so on.
I found FF13-2 to be confusing at times, as you are going through time gates to get to Lightning, the sister of the main character in the game, with the help of a traveller from the future Noel.
I would think those who like the franchise would probably like to try it, but not until the price has gone down.
It's a real shame, as the feel of the game doesn't fit in with previous releases, because of the music and over-all theme/feel.