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.

Holy shit @ the results!

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

Not without reason.

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.

Nope.

The script is being written by Daisuke Watanabe who wrote the script for the first FFXIII.

You sure because I heard the same thing?

What is that?

I apologize for not being clear.

That's a list of FFXIII-2 staff. It's from the official site.