Square-Enix’s demo for Final Fantasy XIII-2 is now available on both Xbox Live and Playstation Network, and I was shocked to find that it was actually pretty fun. I was one of those people who just did not get Final Fantasy XIII, and ended up playing way longer than I should have waiting for the game to “get good”. Well I’m happy to report that the XIII-2 demo suggests that Square-Enix wasn’t just indulging in lip service when they said that they were going to take a serious look at what didn’t work in XIII. This game feels much more like the Final Fantasy we’ve all come to know and love.

Initially I was turned off due to immediately being assailed by some heavy handed, overly dramatic narration from Lightning. All that trepedation was washed away during the course of the boss battle though.

One of the highlights of the demo was the discovery that you can now collect monsters and add them as part of your party. Not only that, but you can customize your paradigms to incorporate different monsters with different skill sets. It really added another level of stratagem to how I was setting up my paradigms, and I loved it! The soundtrack was awesome, conversing with npc’s filled out the backstory or made me chuckle, the addition of quick time events to battles broke up the monotony of spamming the a button.

All signs point to Square-Enix getting their Final Fantasy house in order, and I’m looking forward to reviewing Final Fantasy XIII-2 when it releases. Now get to work on Kingdom Hearts 3 Squeenix!!!