I agree with Batman. As far as battle systems are concerned FF have never been very good. Granted they're not the worst.

(similar to FFX-2, which has the best battle system in the series imo)

Very true, I'm glad to see someone else agrees with me that FFX-2 has the best battle system of the lot. They really nailed it. From what I've seen and played, FFXIII's battle system is like X-2 but with combos (both ground and in the air) and summons.

Really? I find them to be exactly the boring old RPG style, with very little variation. I am referring to the slow-paced ATB battle system with the grating load and victory dance times that make every battle a long, boring button mash. The mechanics behind the battle systems are somewhat interesting and fun to abuse, but it really doesn't make up for it for me.

I always find them pretty good.. they take a while to work out, but are at least different to your boring old RPG style.

For a while in interviews, they said the battle system was not like the one in FFX nor FFXII. However, I think they said it was going to share more similarities with the battle system of FFXII in the end. As in, they're going for an action type battle system that isn't boring/slow. I was kind of disappointed when the demo came out because the battle system wasn't what I imagined it to be. Still, it does look faster paced (similar to FFX-2, which has the best battle system in the series imo) so maybe it won't grow dull after time. I've been finding it difficult to get back into the FF games lately because the battle systems are just terrible.

I totally agree. I was very anxious to see what the battle system in XIII was going to be like after that, but I'm glad to see they've reverted to a system more similar to FFX.

XIII looks like an awesome addition to the series, the biggest problem with XII though was that they tried to make its battle system too similar to XI, which as we all know was an MMO, and fell flat on their proverbial faces.

You should definitely do that, you're missing out on some great games (well, maybe not so much XII).

Hmm.. I really need to find some time to catch up on the last 3 games 

So did I, but I sold it after playing through it a couple of times. The game is shaping up very nicely indeed, and has come a fair way since that demo was made. It'll be a day one purchase for me.

*has the demo*