[To be Determined]

Most Definitely, the original will give you a good start on two and you'll have a better background on the whole story, plus you could always go the extra mile and play the handheld game but I wouldn't consider it mandatory.

I didn't think the dirge of cerberus' controls were very smooth. It was playable but left a lot of room for improvement. Story as well in my opinion. Hopefully they work on that for FF versus XIII It would be pretty sick to use gunblades in real-time action though.