Many who played the original “Final Fantasy XIII,” including myself, found it to be an entirely underwhelming and disappointing experience. 

Sure, the game is easily one of the best-looking games ever to grace the PlayStation 3. Style and artistic direction is certainly never an issue in games developed by Square-Enix. The issue that most plagued “Final Fantasy III” was the super-strict rigidity with which the game’s story—and consequently much of its action—progressed.

The game’s extreme linearity kept me feeling trapped, claustrophobic and unable to freely explore the beautifully rendered world surrounding me. The progression of the game offered no respite from the action, with no towns to speak of. And for God’s sake, the player didn’t even have the option of engaging in conversation with the non-playable characters, resulting in a fan-base reaction that was mixed at best.

This is where “Final Fantasy XIII2” comes in. 

Apparently, the developers heard the cry of the gamers clamoring for a title worthy of the Final Fantasy moniker, and the chief purpose in creating “Final Fantasy XIII-2” is to remedy the shortcomings of the original.

Therefore, it’s probably best to think of “Final Fantasy XIII-2” as “Final Fantasy XIII-Take 2.”

The premise of “Final Fantasy XIII-2” revolves around the mechanics of time travel—which already seems like a much more liberating concept for a game’s story—resulting in a narrative in which the player can choose one of any number of diverging paths at any given point. But time travel can also be dangerous, and stories that involve constant temporal shifts can easily become confusing and convoluted. Anyone who has played Final Fantasy game knows that the series is already predisposed to storylines that barely make sense when all is said and done.

So the developers of “Final Fantasy XIII-2” are tasked with walking the very fine line between creativity and chaos.

Now that I’ve addressed the things that could go wrong in “Final Fantasy XIII-2,” let’s talk about what has gone right.

After playing the “Final Fantasy XIII-2” demo available for download on the PlayStation Network, I was intrigued. I found that it had persuaded me to devote my time to this new adventure, if not for the narrative, then definitely for the gameplay.

At the beginning of the demo, the gameplay modifications that the developers have made are immediately apparent.

The player begins in an openarea excavation site called the Bresha Ruins, which acts as a town of sorts—something the original “Final Fantasy XIII” never had. And the excavation site is inhabited by non-playable characters to whom the player can actually walk up and start a conversation with using the “X” button.

Not only can the player talk to non-playable characters, but some of them even have optional fetch quests that you can choose to accept.

For the next shocker, if you open up the area map from the main menu, you can see that the restrictive corridor-like areas from the original “Final Fantasy

XIII” are a thing of the past. Instead you’re presented with a much more traditional, much less restrictive map that allows you to explore—exploration also being something that the original “Final Fantasy XIII” never had.

If I had a single complaint about the “Final Fantasy XIII-2” demo, it would be that there does appear to be a slight downgrade in visual quality. Some of the non-playable characters definitely suffer from a less-than-awesome polygon count, and textures in general are not as detailed as in the original.

But the freedom to explore an environment that is still quite beautifully rendered was well worth the slight visual tradeoff.

While it’s impossible to gauge the quality of the final product, I am very pleased with the changes I have seen so far. Square-Enix gets top marks for taking a game with obvious shortcomings and re-tooling them.

What Square-Enix developers have done is something new and quite commendable. They have actually taken player reaction into account when developing this “Final Fantasy XIII” sequel and attempted to make a game that the fans want.

It’s just a shame they couldn’t have done it the first time around.