Freedom Or Prison?

I don't know if you guys know my general opinion of XIII but it's this.

The game was good when it was about the characters. That was everything up to the Palamecia.
After this, the story barges into the foreground and most character development ceases/is finished. This marks when I gave up on the game.

It also marks a sharp divide I have with some others in the fanbase. The way I hear it, some people, when they reached Pulse, were like "yessss, FREEDOM!!!"

Me? I didn't react that way at all. In fact, Pulse and its godawful tower are the worst parts of all of FFXIII in my opinion. The fact is, I had been conditioned by 30+ hours of game to just follow the hallway. I had long since abandoned any kind of interest in side stuff. When promptly dumped out in this huge area and told "you can do these Cie'th quest things!" I was not pleased. I was irritated. This was not what I had been playing for and I had no interest in it. The game was wasting my time.

An analogy came to me as I reflected on this, hence the title of this thread. You know that a lot of people who spent a good deal of time in prison DON'T WANT to leave. They would not say "FREEDOM!" when released; quite the contrary in fact. They would be scared and confused and do whatever it took to get back to what they know.

That is how I feel about Pulse. It's scary and it's unfamiliar and I don't want that kind of free roaming in my FFXIII. And it's FFXIII that made feel that way.

So yes, the question. Do you prefer the first half of XIII or the second?

First half, all the way! I honestly didn't mind "corridor simulator" (as I often see others refer to it as...) because like you say, it's where all the good stuff happens. Even the best bit about Pulse was coming back to Cocoon, gate crashing Eden on the Eidolons! I LOVE THAT SCENE SO MUCH. To be fair though the second half does have some good moments, just nothing as stand-out-ish.

Pulse was slightly better than Cocoon.

I don't care if it was "the point" or not to restrict exploration. That doesn't make it any more fun. Doesn't matter if they put more detail into the environments when you never could do anything but to look at them from afar anyway.

The combat is all right, but you can get too much of the good stuff too. I thought it was just paced terribly.