I liked XIII's battle system. I also like turn based systems. I do think that the main series should be innovative rather than forcing that on the spinoff games - but then, I don't think we should have so many spinoff games to begin with anyway. I would rather they spent more time focusing on the main series. But yeah, innovative is good. That can mean any part of the game, but if it means the battle system, so be it. I found XIII's system enjoyable because of the speed at which it moved and the ease at which you could change strategy and still have your team do pretty much what you would be asking them to do if you did have complete control. I can't think of a way off the to of my head that they could have made such a fast battle system without sacrificing control.

Having said all that, I do wish you could switch party leader mid-battle and I do wish that if your party leader died, the party leader role was simply switched to another character automatically.

Quote Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno
Its fine for Limit Breaks and special moves, but building a combat system to make all combat like this, not only diminishes the awesome factor of seeing such moves, but its pretty annoying when the developers don't trust the player to have the skill to pull it off themselves, so they automate it.
I agree, but at the same time I think
Watching your party juggle a big ass Behemoth was pretty cool when you first saw it, by end game, its lost all its luster, and you just wish he enemy would finally die so you can get your loot and get to where you want to go.
It didn't lose it's lustre for me - I enjoyed it all the way through the game. As for wishing the enemy would finally die so you can get your loot - it was the fastest battle system out there, battles were surely over much faster than they were using the old and very slow ATB system.

On topic, I'm not surprised they are keeping the combat system, and I actually like the monster party member idea cause its rare that I see a game botch it up.
It's so far come across to me as the new Summon skill, but we'll see how it goes. If you can all fight alongside the monster, great. If it doesn't slow down the pace of battle, great. But if it's just like Eidolons in FFXIII, I'll barely ever use them.