The series went from the worst ff (12) to one of the best (13)

ff12:

I hate this game. not because its horrible, not because its glitchy. i got this special edition for the game and the first few hours were very gud but then it got so boring, by the end i didnt care about any charcter. The gameplay was boring, leave MMO battle systems in MMO's. I dnt even remember the name of the characters excpt for fran. it was a big disappointment.

2/10

ff13:

most of u know i trolled this game in december after the jp release. my expectations for ff13 after ff10-2 & ff12 were low. when the game was getting low import reviews i was happy, s-e got wht they deserve. but i was wrong, very wrong. the game when i played it amazed me in every way. the battle system was cool, music was gud considering uematuse didnt do it. characters i liked. it had everything i wanted in a ff except minigames. one of the best

10/10

FFXII - 10.0
FFXIII - can't comment... yet

FF12

I loved this game, no rediculous love story. A war that was going on between countries. Loved the battle system, I didn't like it at first but once I knew how to work it I could get people to do what I wanted. I could also change my characters at any time so if my full main squad died I could change to the other and still win. I liked looking for summons even though they didn't help much, it was still cool to fight them and get them.

8/10

FF13

I hated this game. It was slow tedious and had very shallow charcters. All the characters I was able to read, and the story didn't intrigue me as much as the other ones, I found myself rolling my eyes at scene's because they were so perdictable. The battle system was boring, I basically got to the end of the game using auto battle. I had to fight the boss once the quit and re-fight him with a strategy since there wasn't a wait mode, or at least I couldn't find the wait mode if there was one. I didn't like how you only had one summon, and the gauge to use never increased.

2/10

I can't rate FFXIII since I haven't played it and I'm probably more than a year away from playing it, but I can rate FFXII!

I've tried to get into this game a few times and each time I get anywhere from 12 to 20 hours into it and it's just painful.  Where do I start?

• Characters/Story -- I've heard that around 20 hours in the characters and story begin to get interesting but that's bullshit.  I shouldn't have to sit through 20 hours of bad to get to the good.  Most of the characters have little to no reason to be there.  The main kid (whose name escapes me at the moment) has no reason what-so-ever to be there and is there only to annoy you.  Balthier and Fran are there for, well, fuck if I know.  They were bored?  Ashe and her buddy knight guy have a reason, but Ashe is a giant bitch and I have no reason to like her.  The story is just a mess and I stopped caring long before I quit the game.
• The game has like four beginnings -- First you start off with the parade and then Ashe gets "killed".  Then you start off with the random soldier and that other soldier gets "killed".  Finally you get Vahn (aha! I remembered his name) and I'm sitting there wondering if he's going to die too.  I immediately felt no attachement to this character because I was sure they were going to yank him away from me in 20 minutes.
• Horrible beginning -- along with starting you several different times, you don't actually really do anything for the first 15 or so minutes and it isn't until you're hours into the game that you even do anyything interesting.  Look at the first hour of any of the good FFF games and then look at the first hour of FFXII.  They did a terrible job at drawing the player into the game.
• Gambit System -- I loved the idea of the gambit system, I just hate how they implemented it.  They start you off with such terrible gambits that it isn't worth learning.  No, I don't want you to heal me every time I get below 90% health.  If they just would have started me off with a better library of gambits or even given me access to a better library of gambits it would be great, but they didn't.  They don't even start to give you decent ones until much later in the game and by that points I don't care.
• License Grid - another great idea gone terribly wrong.  The first big problem is you can't see what you're working towards.  The sphere grid from FFX was cool because I knew where I was going, the license grid I just kind of had to hope the space two away from me was helpful.  Additionally, the system encouraged every character to be exactly the same.  All my characters except Fran had the same weapon/armor setup and magic because it was simply the best.  One was exactly the same as the other (except slightly different stats that really didn't matter much).  I only made Fran different just so I didn't go crazy from having a party of cones.
• MMO but not - The one thing the game did right was making the world feel alive.  If you've played FFXI you know this game feels like it and just feels alive. 

All in all this is just a shitty shitty shitty game.  I wish I could rant more about it but it has been 4 or more years since I last played and those are my biggest gripes I remember.  All in all, bad game.  My biggest problem is just that it apparently takes 20 hours to get good and that's just bullshit.  Making a player play through 20 hours of bad and then 80+ hours of padding is a shitty thing to do to the player.

2/10

FFXII - haven't played enough of the game to rate it fairly

FFXIII - 7.8/10

Can't rate 13.

FF12 gets a 10. It is my favorite game in the series, and my pick for best. Excellent and human cast, grand sweeping plot dealing with subjects most FFs don't deign to touch, layers and layers of adversaries, easily the best script and voice acting in the entire series, and an active and engaging battle system I couldn't get enough of. Quickenings are my favorite form of Limit Break in the series, and this game also has the best system for summons.

FF13 was my first one I played. I have begun playing FF12 but can't rate it yet, so far I don't really like it much.

I got ff13 after seeing the positive review in OXM, I got it for xbox 360 and wow it was unlike anything I'd played before. The battle mode was really cool after you got to fight odin because i found out paradims are important in that battle and experimented. the game looked great graphically, except for the girl with pig tails (Vanille) the characters were pretty good especially snow and fang (I have a nerd crush on her). Story stayed interesting and was very well done. man the music was amazing and the cut scenes in between that were of a higher quality like the one on the racecourse blew me away. some cut scenes really touched me and were well done like when hope gives the doll back to the girl.

But all the villain sucked and the one with the big ^-^ what happened to her? we didn't get to fight her. The battles got very hard toward the end and I can't beat the big dinosaurs on grand pulse! Voice acting was off at times and the lip synch was off.

Around 25 hours in it became one of my games of the generation and after the ending it was my tied favorite game of the generation with mass effect 2. It seemed so different and fresh from all the rpg's I had been playing being a big PC and xbox gamer recently I am amazed they made a fantastic battle system that requires you to press 3 buttons most of the time, yet its exciting. I don't understand the complaints or the metascore, maybe its inferior to other FF's but many reviewers seem to have reviewed with a mind of what they wanted it to become not for what the game itself is, clearly I can't comment on this as I haven't played other FF's but some complaints in reviews I read online sounded really unnecessary.

I give FF13 a 10

FFXII was ok.. 8/10

I haven't played FFXIII yet

FFXII: 7.5/10

The battle system was an improvement over the older battle systems and the story had an immense amount of potential. In fact, it could have quite easily been the best story of any Final Fantasy game and didn't use any of the old Japanese anime sterotypes. However, they forget to actually tell the story in the game. It was all a bit like they'd had this great story and decided that they didn't really need to develop it hugely and use the game to share it fully. Unfulfilled potential imo.

FFXIII 7/10

Again, the battle system was great, although it had its downsides. Unfortunately, the first few hours are probably the worst introduction to a Final Fantasy game ever. It was also far too linear for the vast majority of the game with what was essentially a mediocre story for the genre. It picked up brilliantly in the middle, but then peaked and went back to the same old stuff later on.

The removal of towns also really hurt the game. I like being able to take in the scenery and have some respite from all the battling and from the story whilst soaking the atmosphere of a specific region. A few traditional towns could have easily rectified this. If I want a linear path with beautiful scenery I'll play GoW3 or Uncharted 2, not a Final Fantasy. Also, why on Earth did they send us to Gran Pulse (great btw), only for us to return to Cocoon a short while later? Regardless of story it felt cheap and annoying. Oh yeah, and the ending annoyed me.