I've heard a lot of bad things about FFXIII, but mainly about it's  gameplay. I've also heard a lot of people say the story sucks. But I've also heard peoppeople say Kingdom Hearts story sucks. And I love the story in that. So plain and simple, how is FFXIIIs story?

It's definitely not Kingdom Hearts. Never really enjoyed any of the characters and the story was just needlessly complicated and you have to read data logs to get most of the back story. Then again, it's been 3 years since I last played XIII, so I may have forgotten some stuff. There were some epic moments but I didn't like the story.

If you want an intriguing story in a JRPG, play Suikoden!

The story is great. Nothing that defies the convention of storytelling, but it is very enjoyable. The cast may not be up to everyone's taste, and you might get confused with the complicated lore names (Which makes most people have to use the Data Logs, but they're not necessary to comprehend the story itself), but everything else, I think it was pretty good.

Well I played XIII and I liked it, I read every single data log and got most of the story and I thought it was interesting :)
I put 50h into that game

The needlessly complicated part and the reading dialogs bits from the above post are the reason the game gets bad press from it's story. The narrative is not told through the characters, they mention things like we know what they are yet we are in the dark, it's all but jibberish unless you decide you wanted to read a game and not play it.

Ambitious to a fault.

Better than FF13-2 and FF13-3, I will tell you that. But it is not good.

Its pretty good despite what most say. You gotta remember the Internet is the vocal minority. They dont represent what all gamers think.

Its a good game that should be called something else.

Not always but in this case it's what the majority thinks