What worked in this game

[ShinGundam]

I don't know why everyone raves about the battle system. Did they not play FFX-2?

I did and I thought both of them were great

My point is that the battle system plays like FFX-2 yet somehow more streamlined. I think HC's post above counts the ways well enough.

Streamlined? I don't know about that but what makes it impressive to me is, In all versions of ATB prior to FFX-2 if one character/enemy took an action that action animation would finish playing before another attack happened.

In FFX-2, for example, with fast command input you can have multiple characters acting at the same time, even killing an enemy as it is moving in to do a physical attack for example, if I recall. At the very least I am positive in many cases multiple actions at the same time are possible which mean you don't need auto/preset combination attacks that many RPGs do when you can time and chain your commands at will.

Simply, Older games fallow simple event driven flow while X-2 (and XIII) are more realtime flow.

In XIII it is the same somehow with ability to execute or cancel string of commands but battles built around stagger bar and launching enemies, i think.