I can't tell what the battle system is supposed to be like. Do you give information to your allies or what?

Gamespot did a very in depth play through of FFXIII with the demo they got some months back..

Apparently, you don't do anything for your AI companions from what I was seeing and what they were describing.. it's another game where you don't actively control them.. but you don't get to govern their AI like in XII with Gambits, either.

I suppose the developers are thinking the AI is pretty good and they have enough settings in place that they won't be a hindrance?

Not sure I really like the direction of the game.. I hate to see that battle engage sequences are back in after putting so many hours into a game where it's more free form.. just run up and fight.

The battle system looks like that of the Xenoxxxx's games where you have a number of slots (in the demo it was 3) and your 'ATB' fills up one at a time (relatively quickly) and you program in 3 attacks at once or 1 big attack (Chaining seemed a hell of a lot better than the 1 big attack at the time).

The only problem I saw with it.. was that when you chain up 3 attacks for one enemy.. if it dies on the first shot.. you 'shadow hit' the other 2 shots at it's now gone corpse.. which is stupid.. because the game looks -perfect- to be very fluid and queue up hits on one target and when it dies to continue on something else.

Now, Gamespot mentioned many times that it was a very early demo play through.. so hopefully these things will be changed because it was rather stupid looking at the time watching your character swing and hit the air for no apparent reason because you queue'd them to attack.

either way, I still look forward to it.. and see what polish has been thrown on it.. it looks good so far and I'm really hoping the combat is more in depth possibly through combos with team mates.

That.. and it's Final Fantasy

Woo, back to traditional Final Fantasy ATB combat! Haven't had that since Final Fantasy 9. I mean, the FF11 type of run-and-slash battle system was interesting, and FFX's slow-paced battles allowed for more strategy, but there's nothing like "SWOOSH" OMG battle, taking turns running across the field hitting each other in hyper-timed combat. Although if it's true about how you only control one party member, they just re-lost my interest.

Next I want to see them bring back the world map.

I miss the world map... =(

They haven't had one since FF9. It didn't work in FF10, so why did they continue to use it?