With the E3 showing of FFXV and the Lightning Returns costumes/info I've decided to give FF13 and 13-2 a play through. I love JRPGs, but exploring towns and awesome battling has always been a big draw, so with hearing constantly about the linearity and battle issues I never picked it up.
So far I'm just scratching into 13, in the first temple thing. I can live with linear play, because to me open world and compelling story are always at odds. A totally open world has no sense of urgency and by the time you hit the next plot point it's all fairly vague (for me)... while totally linear kills the fun of exploring but gives a tighter narrative. So far the annoyance with combat is the biggest issue I have. Aside from the standard trope of charging a line of guys firing assault rifles with a sword (or... *punching* a giant steel mech...) autobattle pisses me off. Is autobattle a thing in 13-2 as well? I don't mind it existing as an option, because I understand some people want the story without the RPG combat I consider to be fun, but an option should be something you can turn on or off, not the default setting and eternal first listed item at every combat turn.
I know I can set the cursor to default to abilities, and I've done that, it's just slightly annoying that there's no way to turn the option off entirely. Why am I clicking attack over and over when I could just select auto? Why not just tape down my X button and let the computer handle everything?
To the many who've played through this, if it bothered you did it get less annoying in time?
Also: Snow. Seriously? "See all those guys in metal armor with rocket launchers and machine guns firing this way? I'm going to run at them with my chest fully exposed. And punch them. Because I'm a hero. A stupid, stupid dipshit of a hero." Please tell me we find out he's doing this because he has some type of brain tumor, so I can feel bad for the guy instead of hoping for his painful, embarrassing death.
*edit*
So combat is turning out better than expected ignoring the autobattle option. I like that the spells don't give a listed damage, so for nonelemental spells you actually have to test them vs a standard attack to see what's more effective. I just wish it was a bit easier to see which damage number correlated to which attack, when I test something like Ruin vs Attack it's not very easy to see which did what with 2 other people attacking and every character running in different directions. Likewise I haven't noticed Libra actually give me any information in battle like scan spells did. I might just be missing it, I hope I don't have to check the enemy datalog for each enemy to see and (the difficult part for me) remember what they're weak against.