There is this place before you get to pulse that you must stay at for a while. You get credit chips there which can be sold for money. In FFXIII if you spend time leveling up weapons, the game is much easier. When I play FFXIII I manage to stay on that ship for as long as I can. When I got every characters weapon maxed I save some more money and then leave. You can get more money by continuing but for sanity sake you probably want to do a combo of 4 or more ways to get money or you WILL drive yourself insane.

As a comparison between the trilogy Final Fantasy XIII-2 is undoubtedly my favorite. XIII is too liner and takes forever to complete. If you want to level all weapons and accessories you could spend lots and lots of time. In XIII-2 I managed to get every monster, all items, everything 3 times in my life.

As for Lightning Returns the game to me was too puzzling like it needed a walkthrough just to know it all. The best features of the game were only accessible AFTER you beat the game. However it did a beautiful job in story line. Making it so FFXIII was finally given a happy ending.