Change the controls to "manual" and then you will use A to attack and B to defend. Right now it's set for the computer to attack for you, not sure why the game defaults to that, takes the fun out of it. Its still not a super deep combat system, but far more enjoyable that spamming auto battle over and over lol. I love XIII don't get me wrong, the paradigm system was great, but the actual battles weren't fun to me though. Even manually selecting my abilities felt pointless knowing I could just hit auto battle and basically win everything, switching to medic roles when needed. I eventually spent most of my time in battle trying to keep the enemies juggled in the air as long as I could.
edit: i hope my lighting returns comes in soon. Everyone I know has gotten theirs, the tracking on mine hasn't been updated since the 12th.