Its looking a hell of a lot better than XIII was, this may be one of those rare times a sequel really outshines its predecessor, though I don't feel it will be hard for XIII since the original didn't have much going for it anyway beyond technical specs.

My guess for the plot,some FFXIII spoilers is that Goddess Etro screwed the XIII timeline by saving Cocoon and the villain and Noel are both from the worlds original timeline where Cocoon was destroyed, and now they are screwing with time as well for some nefarious reason, I even bet Lindzei will end up being behind it all. Etro is using Lightning and possibly Snow to stop the new badguy and both gods are exploiting Serah and Noel by manipulating them using the Time Crux to screw history.