Just finished the demo - it took me two times to defeat Atlas. The first time I tried, I had no freaking clue what was going on with my HP, then something clicked - ahhh, wounds! So I had a much easier bout with him the next time.
I like the battle system, especially the immediacy of the paradigm shifts. Very handy. However, I'm still not sold on this whole monster thing. What I'm afraid of, for myself, is that I'm going to get overwhelmed by how freaking many there are and not figure out who would be the best to focus on leveling up and such. I feel like I'll need the guide to best utilize them, and for something that is such a huge part of game play, I feel it should be a little more intuitive than that. I know that leveling up the weapons in XIII is probably a comparable experience, but I admit that I used the guide for that, and the options weren't so plentiful, really.
The crystarium...
Let's just say I'm a little confused. I'm sure I'll figure it out once I'm able to play around with it from the beginning, but tbh I just kind of randomly picked things to upgrade
I must say, though, I do kind of like the monster crystarium. It seems like there was actually thought put into it, such as the way different components work for different monsters. Still, I will need to really figure it out before I'm able to utilize it very well.
I'm afraid that I might get annoyed with Mog...sorry for all of you who might be squeeing about how kawaii Mog is or whatever, I really mean no offense
Also - LOVE that the party leader switches when your current leader dies.