In a not-surprising news release, Producer Yoshinori Kitase has announced Final Fantasy XIII-2 is very close to completion. He was also nice enough to share some personal impressions, as he himself is currently playing through the game.

Kitase said that the game is heavily packed with various different elements, like Historia Crux, Fragment Collecting and new Side-Missions.  He remarked that, even with the new Player-Driven approach rather than XIII’s Story-Driven approach, the game’s story is great and balances well with the gameplay itself.

Kitase also brought up a feature of the Historia Crux – when you, for example, get into a fight with a strong monster too early and you die, when you go back to a Time Portal you have the option of ‘Resetting’ the area you are in, and the strong monster will reappear for you to fight with your new higher level characters. This could be one of the ways XIII-2′s replay value has been expanded, but we don’t know for sure yet if this works on Bosses and Story Events.

Lastly, during the event, a girl came up to him and asked in Japanese when Versus XIII would be released. Kitase noted he was rather unhappy that he was unable to give her an answer. He says it left a strong impression on him.

Thanks for member Musou for pointing this out!
Futher details and translations from Andriasang