I'll definitely pass on this game based on this. While part of me wants to give a crap about a time travel storyline and traveling to different places, the fact that the battle system is basically unchanged is an instant deal breaker. I've made no secret of my hatred of that battle system. It was easily one of the worst I've ever played in a game of the sort of scale and budget FFXIII was operating on.

I'll throw them a bone though: it's great that your party leader dying isn't an instant game over now. That was a stupid idea in FFXIII, a stupid idea in Persona 3, and a stupid idea in any other RPG that ever used it. So good for them for at least recognizing one major flaw in the battle system and fixing it. It's just too bad that core battle system itself was so horribly bad that fixing one part of it (the easiest one to fix no less) won't fix it.