ROFL, 21. I gave the game a 4/10, but I guess I can relate to you either way.
My top games vary greatly from yours however...

1) FFX
2) Persona 3 (any of the editions, really, but the one on PSP is the best.)
3) MGS3
4) Chrono Trigger
5) Final Fantasy VI
6) Odin Sphere
7) Disgaea: Hour of Darkness
8) Final Fantasy VIII
9) MGS2
10) Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2

well of course yours is different from mine! Either way, the fact that Final Fantasy VI is in your top ten makes you A-OK in my eyes.

All in my opinion FF is my favorite franchise. But I think a lot of people like to ignore problems with their favorite game in the franchise. My favorites are 5,8,10-2. 9 would be my favorite if the battlesystem wasn't so slow and boring.

I've played all the final fantasy's 4-13 completely
It was bit more linear... where final fantasy always has been too linear. (FF's barring 5,8,12 are feel completely point A to point B. Less so than 13. But still)
The writing didn't really feel worse than any of the FF's besides 9,12. The story felt fine, until it self-destructed midway through like FF9's story selfdestructed 3/4's through. It didn't match FF6's story, but it's dialogue wasn't worse. FF's and many videogames dialogue always have problems this was no exception.
The Music Ranked Up There With Uematsu's better soundtrack.
Best Overall Art Direction in a Final Fantasy for me.
My favorite battle system with FF12 (FFX-2's battle system was the best imo, but everything besides that one dungeon was too easy).
2 aweful characters, Snow, and Hope... a bit higher than normal for final fantasy. (Vanille gets way too much flak imo)
The story had nice ideas... and problems. Like a lot of final fantasy's have. It's no ghost in the shell or 2001

I enjoyed it immensely.

I judge RPGs almost entirely by how non-linear they are, in terms of gameplay, plot and character development.

FFXIII gameplay was extremely linear, as was the story.
The leveling element of it also was effectively quite linear. Sure, you got some choice about which stuff to get first, but in the long term you got pretty much no choice (compared to the RPGs I enjoy most)

In addition to that, I didn't find the combat system enjoyable.

I actully agree with you on this, the battle system in FF9 wouldve been so much better if they left it with 3 characters, and instead made it faster and more action based (like FF7 and FF8) rather than tactical. and its not the visual spectacle FF7 or 8 were. and the story got a bit too messy at the very end with Necron. but i think the pre-set classes were a great return and it was ultimately a very good game - funny too, its rare to have that in a games.

i think you've made some good points about FF13, the art direction and the soundtrack were very good. however the key problem for me was the script and the writing, which just didnt feel sophisticated. i think i mentioned this before, but the anelects were excellent, the mythology of the world is very well done. but it was annoying that very few of the 6 hours of cutscenes were actully spent on exploring that mythology.

i've heard that they've hired a professional novelist to write the script for FF13-2, so i think fans might be in for a treat if they decide to build on the FNC mythology this time round.

I hate to say FF XIII really was a dissapointment. I only bought a PS3 because of this game (before it was announced on XB360). But I couldnt believe how boring it was. It felt like you ran down the exact same corridor over and over again and got attacked by the exact same enemies.

The graphis & music were great and the battle system was fairly good, even Lightning wasnt a bad main character, but the level up system and the summons were too complicated in my opinion. It's a rare game I wanted to complete but in the end it's faults stopped me.

hahahaha.

I agree with everything you've said completely.

And yet, I know I like FFXIII a lot more than you. But A203D I wouldn't get your hopes up too much imo. It will be melodramatic It is Square-Enix XD (imo). (And you know I'm not a SE hater).

Holy shit @ the results!

This really is the most hated offline main series 3D FF.

Not without reason.

I'm just going to state my piece and head out. I have been a fan of Final Fantasy since the first on NES (first video game I bought with my own money). I own every main series FF from I to XI. I felt FFXII was a disappointment since it was awkward to try to control your party without gambits and with gambits you could just put your controller down and watch it play itself. I really wanted to like XIII but I just couldn't. The game stripped away many of the RPG elements without adding anything in it's place. It seemed to take the worse parts of Action and RPG game designs and smoosh them together in a pile of unplayable crap. It looked great, visually, and I actually like the combat system (felt more like a series of macros to me). I played thru 11hrs of the game before I gave up. I almost gave up about 6hrs in but ppl kept telling me "it gets better in Chapter 5". So I played thru Chapter 5 and it still sucked. Then ppl told me "It gets better in Chaper 9 or 11". At that point my thought was "I don't want to play thru another 7-10hrs of suck in hope that it might get better later" so I stopped. Overall here' how I would break it down:

Pros:

graphics best of any FF in the series to date, combat system

Cons:

Terrible level design (I can't even say world design since there is no world, Chapter = Level), no towns, no NPCs, no world interaction outside of combat or CS, terrible characters (seriously, I found the characters in Star Ocean 4 less annoying), and a story that seemed to consist of "we're on the run!" then "we're still on the run" then "keep running".... in 11hrs nothing seemed to develope.

I hope that FFXV is much better than this. Whenever it comes out on PS4/NextBox, I'll rent it if I own one of those systems at that point. I've basically written off the series, tho, since it's been one disappointment after another since Sakaguchi is gone. I'll just have to import the Project Rainfall games to get a good JRPG if Nintendo of America doesn't get their heads out of their rears.