Kind of a random thing to pick out and explain, but
But that doesn't really explain anything that matters. I couldn't put my finger on it before, but now I can, and I'm actually going to semi-quote MovieBob's review of phantom menace. In the second one, what they did was just completely pander to the complaints everyone else had. Everyone complained about it being too linear, so they went in the complete opposite direction, to the point where the different segments of the game felt too...segmented, with just a little bit of ovrreaching story here and there, but, much like Kingdom hearts, the sections all felt self-contained and mostly unrelated. It gives you sort of an empty feeling. Not to mention every place is just a small island, with no interconnecting paths, so there was no sense of grand adventure, just little mini adventures.
I also mentioned this to Kana one time, but I felt like they took the whole idea that people complained about there not being any NPCs, and ran too far, the worlds seem overpopulated and crowded. They even had to change up the encounter system because of it. Did you notice that the reason monsters pop in out of nowhere is because the resources for populating the map that were used for monsters in 13 are being eaten up by the 40 some odd NPCs in 13-2? They did it in an elegant way, but just knowing that sort of cheapened things.
Monsters did drop gil, though, which was a major improvement, but the funny thing about that was it didn't matter, because there was no achievement/trophy that required billions of gil to accomplish. In fact, I felt like there was really no big need to buy anything. I never used items. I'd say throughout the game I MAYBE spent 200k, and well over half of that was int he casino. I bought weapons twice, then once I got the paradox weapons, i didn't need anything more. Sure, there are infinity+1 weapons to be gotten, but once I finished everything else, I found myself with no real motivation to go for 100% completion. Not that it was that far out of reach.
I think I just felt that the game was *too* easy. In so many different ways. In 13 I got my arse handed to me on a regular basis (at least my first time through the game) in 13-2 I lost once to a tonberry while i was way underlevel, and once to the final boss because it took a cheap shot.
I also really, really, really, really disliked how they limited you to three monsters. Do you realize how badly that throws off my battle strategy? They basically force you to decide which limb to cut off, as you can only have a half-baked tri-paradigm system. I think out of everything, this is the thing I actually hate the most.
The last thing that comes to mind is something silly, but still relevant. You had no last resort option. In 13 you had your summon. If you were up against the wall and you were about to eat it, you could use your summon and recoup. In 13-2 you had bugger-all if you were in a jam. Not that you ever got into a situation where it was necessary, so it's sort of a moot point, but I bet I could have survived the final boss the first time had I had some sort of thing like that up my sleeve. I know that your summoning in the game was in the form of the monster collecting, but I wasn't a big fan of that, either. I didn't like it in Symphonia2 and I don't like it in 13-2.