LogFAQs > #979524655

Yes I had a lot of other problems with FFXIII's design, but I got really into its battle system.

Having just finished Hard mode and watched all the scenes in Chapter 13 and 14 again, I liked them quite a bit more with more of an idea of what was going on. Still think it's a mess, but the visceral negative reaction I had the first time has lapsed. Leaning towards "kernel of a decent idea but very badly executed" and away from "utter butchery". I hope they major on commit to Cloud's mental breakdown and how the rest of the party deals with it in game 3; they've spent most of the back third of this game building up the degradation of his mental state; need to do something with it now.

As for the boss rush itself, I actually quite liked it, but only because I had a lot of prior knowledge to work around some baffling design decisions (multiple cheap moves in one fight + no ability to change loadouts for your party members). I think I counted 9 separate fights, albeit at least 4 are against the same HP bar with different party members.

Now for the legendaries...