Hot on the tail of reading your Chrono Cross retrospective, I came here and again I share your feelings. I absolutely couldn't deal with XIII but enjoyed XIII-2 enough to platinum it on PS3 and played it again on steam after a series of fan patches.
Self aware silliness, with some genuine moments when needed. Not perfect, but really enjoyable and it really did a lot of correct the flaws of XIII.
Chrono Trigger is still my favorite RPG to this day and this game hit a ton of my CT zones. It felt like someone was itching to make another CT game and figured they would use a bunch of FF XIII assets to do it. I'm on the FF ride until heat death too, and this was a nice stop along the way.
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