So I forgot to mention this awhile back, but I got to play the Final Fantasy 13 (Japanese) demo. The demo is apparently the actual beginning of the game, and I must say, it does not dissapoint. The whole scenario has a very...Final Fantasy 7 feel to it. Different...yet similar. You start out in a "train" that is inbound to a Matrix-ish looking interior city with massive walkways / robots / etc. The main character, Lightning (Cloud's daughter? lol), and some other guy start causing a ruckus with the local resistance. A few other characters pop-up, yadda yadda yadda, it all plays out very nice and smooth.

The graphics are simply amazing, specifically the characters. Definitely some of the best ingame character models I've seen. The music also stuck out as being really good, most notably the fight music. So speaking of fighting (which from recent reports appears to have changed somewhat), you get to choose out of a few options to build up your "attack meter". For example you can choose a basic attack, a throw, and a fire spell, which uses up your three battle spots, and then you tell the game when to activate it. Syncing it with your AI controlled partners gives you bonus damage. Or you can go all out and use one spell that takes up 3 spots but does area of effect damage. In this basic stage it is fairly straightforward, but I've heard this is only like 10% of the complete battle system, so who knows how it turns out, but from what I've seen, I like it. The fighting is NOT like Final Fantasy 12 (good or bad), but it is different and unique. Now that I'm thinking about it a little bit more it has some similarities to Xenosaga 2 only you control 1 character and the others are all attacking at the same time as you (if you've played Xenosaga 2, don't be turned off it's not super annoying where you have to do throws to even win a battle - just trying to give a comparison).

So, yeah. Final Fantasy 13 looks, as expected, to be pretty damned sweet. I personally think the choice to put Final Fantasy 13 on XBOX 360 is a poor one, as it will be many, many discs, and most likely will not run nearly as smooth as the Playstation 3 version, but you know, money talks. I'm hyped.