Just one week until FFXIII-2! Dengeki has some final words from the developers.

Dengeki PlayStation has a final pre-release interview with Final Fantasy XIII-2 producer Yoshinori Kitase and director Motomu Toriyama. We already shared a few bits from the interview that suggested that the Sazh character will appear not in the main game but as post release download content. Here are some other bits:

• Toriyama says that the game's various episodes are at most around 3 hours. They're made like this so that busy people can easily play.
• The bonuses for FFXIII owners keep on increasing. Now Toriyama says that if you have FFXIII save data (it doesn't have to be clear data, just save data), you'll get special monster decorations. Additionally, you'll get higher success rates in the game's casino area. The title screen will also have some sort of bonus.
• As previously detailed, you face off against the game's download content bosses in a coliseum area. There will also be small story elements here.
• There's an area of the world that will provide updates about available download content.
• The game has both auto save and save anywhere. Auto Save was apparently included because it's a trend for overseas games. However, it may be a bit hard to figure out where it's saving, so they've included the save anywhere option as well.
• You can make Odin into an ally monster. He first appears as a boss for one of the game's episodes.
• After clearing the game, you'll return to the opening. If you close the Historia Crux gate there, you'll be able to enjoy a "New Game Plus" type experience. You may want to play the game a second time, as there are some items that you'll only get on the second time through, like certain monster decorations that you get based off your Live Trigger conversation choices.
• When you first start the game, Noel and Serah can use Attacker, Blaster and Defender Roles.

As we mentioned earlier, Dengeki gave the game an "S" rating. This was part of one of the magazine's "Buyers Guide" reviews, and was not the full numbered review. As plusses, the review listed the selectable difficulties and the large amount of extra content. As a minus, the review said that the load times for switching areas is a bit long.

[via Sokuho]