Yes!!! IMO the story isn't as good as 7,8 and 12 but it's still a great series.

XIII is one of the worst games I've tried, ever. S-E deserved to sell about 20 copies, no more.

Sad day when such a horrible game series/saga crosses 10M sales.

in the grand scheme of things? yes they do deserve it. Hear me out. These sales are NOTHING to boast about. At all. 3 games released on two different platforms across the gen and it could only muster about about 10 mil? AND its the FF series. It just shows the decline of the series right there. Hell FF7 on JUST PS1 did almost 10 mil. Not even going to calculate the PSN sales.

Its comforting to know that Final Fantasy VII has outsold the entire XIII saga.

just to illustrate how unimpressive these sales actually are. FF13 proper, still sold less than 7,8 or 10. Keep in mind thats 13 released on TWO consoles versus those one. I imagine the FF13 rerelease will widen the gap even further. Not to mention that the 7 series still blows the sales of 13 away. 7 and CC alone put it above 12mil didnt even throw Dirge in there. 

And for even more comparisons. THe ME trilogy has sold more than 13mil across 3 platforms ( thats 13mil WITHOUT counting the trilogy or WIi U version)

It does. FFXIII was good game, although pretty damn linear for the most part. I haven't finished FFXIII-2 but I was getting into the groove of it before i gave it back to gamefly. Not sure about Lighting Returns.

XIII and XIII-2 were both solid games I enjoyed. I felt combat took a bit, but there is flow to it in terms of paradigm shifts that was really fun on tough boss battles. The story is average with mix of good and bad characters and some inconsistent development.

I think if it had been called a new IP people would have been easier on it for its various departures.

KH never claimed to be anything else though. Main character was Sora, you played as Sora. Final Fantasy was a turn based JRPG, what people expected was that.

FFXIII was bad because of what it didn't do, didn't give you control of your entire party, didn't allow your party members to revive your main character if they were knocked out, it didn't allow freedom of character building/leveling (you were pretty much stuck with their 3 main skills), magic seemed to have little real value, MP was gone, lack of random encounters, lack of exploration, no airship, health regenerated after battles, weapons upgrading seemed pointless.  I didn't connect with the characters, the only good one was Fang as at least she knew what she was there for. It didn't explain what the hell anything was, it expected us to read about it in the datalog instead of telling us in the game narrative like good story telling (and most previous FF games). I would easily say it was just 'press X to continue', you pressed X in battles to win, leveling characters you just pressed 'X' until you ran out of leveling points.

I say all this and I think it's a solid 7/10, graphics were excellent. But that's the issue, it was a poor Final Fantasy game, easily the worst I've played. (I know I'm not the guy above but want to give my view).

Hmm...I don't exactly remember S-E advertising FFXIII as a "turn -based RPG". Final fantasy has always had different battle systems. FFXII wasn't strictly turn based either. If you mean waiting for ATB gauge before an action, FFXIII had that too.

No control of entire party =/= bad. KH did it and it was received just fine. In SMT:Nocturne, your party can't revive you either...is that game bad? FFX  has leveling limits via the level 1,2,3 and 4 sphere blocks...was it bad too? Tales of Graces F doesn't use MP either, is it a bad game? You really think a lack of random encounters is bad? Seriously most games have abandoned those since early ps2. There was exploration once you reached pulse similar to FFX calm lands in that regard. Bad game? I think not. Health regenerated after battles...why is it bad? Just because it didn't in older games?

Whether you connected with the characters is completely personal and not really relevant to how good or bad the game is. I can't connect with Hayabusa but I still love Ninja Gaiden series. Not sure what that has to do with anything. The datalog thing I'll give you,  some things should've been explained without forcing you to read up yourself. In all FF games besides maybe FFXII, you can pres "X" to win probably 80% of the time. Not sure why this became a problem after FFXIII. Not sure why pressing X to level is any worse that automatically gaining your stats and abilities. You just sound really nostalgic.

IMO, it was a great FF game. I've played FF7,8,9,10,10-2,12,13,13-2 and the only one that lagged slightly behind the rest is 13-2 because it was clearly cheaply made (and other things) compared to the high production values FF has. That's about it.