Yes, and your first point is exactly why FF13-2 should not have been a time travel story. I'm no writer, but I bet I could write a FF13-relevant, better and more consistent story without time travel in less than a week. There are literally dozens of directions they could have taken that all would have been better than loltimetravel. Hell, even Barthandeus surviving and secretly plotting his revenge would have been more believable than what we got.