Now that XIII-2 has been out for a few months and we have been given time to retrospect, what do you think? How does this fall among the rest of the series?
I think it was much, much better than XIII. I could actually see myself maybe playing this game again someday (but probably won't). Serah wasn't horrible as a main character and I really liked Noel. I think if you replaced FFXIII with this game's mechanics I wouldn't have had as big a problem with XIII. Also replace Snow with Noel.
Still, the AI party in a turn-based battle system does bug me. And the story for this game was more ludicrous and unnecessary than your average video game. Even looking back, I just don't see this 'fitting' with the rest of the series. Not even as much as X-2 did.