Due, you CAN select who your party members are later in the game just not during the 1st few chapters. Sucks for a JRPG fan to miss out on the ultimate JRPG series. The genre ispretty barren this gen relative to ps2 era so you may not have much else to play (JRPG-wise) if you skip FFXIII. Well, have fun with whatever you choose in its place.
"Dr. Tenma, according to you, lives are equal. That's why I live today. But you must have realised it by now...the only thing people are equal in is death"---Johann Liebert (MONSTER)
"WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives"---Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler