Sorry to interject here, I couldn't resist.  Gameplay is broken.  Ravager + Healer + Commando = Win on every normal enemy (Lower Level).  Ravagerx2 + Commando = Win on every normal enemy (Higher levels).  It got so bad with me button mashing X (Or A on the 360) that I literally started watching T.V. shows while fighting enemies because it became so monotonous and long.  Story telling is horrible.  Everything important is in the datalogs (Seriously they put the entire war of Transgression and the real motives for Bartandalus in there).  The dialog in the game is horrible.  The characters keep spouting the same non-sense throughout the entire game.  Zazh is the only character that doesn't, but then again he and Vanille are the only characters with actual character development.  Characters are your typical Japanese archtype anime characters and again; there's very little character development.  FFX is very "open" compared to FFXIIII, at least one game lets you go back to almost any point; plus there's quite a fair amount of side quests in FFX(Compared with any FF game).  Can't say the same for the FFXIII.

ok i admit there is some kind of button mashing that can get annoying because i've used an autofire controller to skip that problem too. but that's nothing why i would say the gameplay is broken in general. they just should have added autofire or an autoattack option to mak it more convenient. your

"Ravager + Healer + Commando = Win on every normal enemy (Lower Level).  Ravagerx2 + Commando = Win on every normal enemy (Higher levels)"

statment is definitly not true. you certainly don't win endgame(boss)battles without switching to other setups as well. Maybe you use these setups the most but that does not mean the others are completely useless. when i think back to ffx, i used tidus, rikku and wakka the most. does that mean the other characters were completely broken because this party was the most effective? 

as for the story: the content is in there. you just had to listen closely and read. if you want everything in cinematics prepare to pay way more than 60$ because so far jrpgs haven't reached cod or gta sales.

and if characters in ffxiii talk nonsense about le cie, fal cie and saving the world during the game then characters in ffx talk nonsense about sin, the calm and saving the world too.

I like it! It's definitely not the best Final Fantasy ever made but it's a darn good RPG. It was too linear though, and the final boss was a cheap motherfucker.

Keywords "normal enemies"

You do realize if you don't do the side quests you have no idea what happens to pulse?  You go down to pulse and they explain nothing.  You go to Oerba and they don't even tell you that Fang was the one that cause the village's destruction, and essentially caused the entire war of transgression.  The entire backstory for Bartandalus is in the datalogs, so if you don't read those, you have no idea why Bartandalus is doing this.  Hell I was arguing with my friend; who thought Bartandalus was just some Fal'Cie who wanted to kill people because that's what he does.  Until me and his brother had to explain to him about Etro and the door to the maker.  This is not good story telling AT ALL.  This is an example of what you do wrong in story telling.  You never had this issue in FFX because all the backstory was explained in dialogue or with that Maechen character, explaining every area and its backstory.  There's no encyclopedia for FFX because its not needed.  FF XIII's story doesn't make any sense without the datalogs.

Final Fantasy XIII's dialogue is atrocious.  Every character said the same shit over and over again right near to the end of the game.   FFX's dialogue, while started the anime trend, was well done.  Seeing Yuna break down a little past the midpoint of the game cause she didn't want to die, but kept on a facade to give strength to others, Wakka's character arc was amazing, going from the al bhed hater because of what happened to Chappu.  Lulu's involvement with Chappu and Wakka.  Auron's entire backstory.  Everything was actually written well.  The most development I saw in FFX happened at two parts of the game; Chapter 7 and 8 (Which was really well done).  That's two chapters out of 13.  And even then two of the 5 characters who get developed revert back (Hope freaking out on Pulse was stupid and out of no where considering what happened in Chapter 7 with his father).

Note: I might have the chapters mixed up. 

I think it's funny there seems to be an overlap of the people who say FF13 was the worst (which it isn't) and the people who declare FFX as one of the best. Why? FF13 is panned by fans due in large part to its linear gameplay, but the thing is, FFX is the probably the second biggest offender of linear gameplay with an archaic battle system. Not to mention, FFX had the most disappointing final bosses ever conceived. At least FF13 took to evolving the ATB system, which is now amazing in Lightning Returns.

without the logs he's some sort of lower god who doesn't like the society he's responsible for. so he causes trouble to create chaos which at some point makes an upper god, who's left the world in the past, reappear who then hopefully creates an new, better society. With the logs he's the exact same thing with history. It's not that his doing is totally pointless without the logs. you just get more background info about him and the world in general. i think the logs were a compromise of being cost effective and putting as much story content as possible in there.

now regarding character development: lightning went for an only caring for herself and serah to an caring for others as well character. both lightning and hope overcome their hate for snow. vanille deals with her guilt for causing all this... and so on. i certainly don't see why ffx should be so much better than this.

Bartandalus cares for his society; he just wants to see the maker more.  At no point in the game does Bartandalus explain that he's doing this to see the maker.  At no point do they explain that he needs the spirits (Those things floating around in Oerba) to open the door to Etro.  At no point out of the data logs is this stuff explained.

Lightning did change, Serah didn't change cause she wasn't in the game much.  Snow didn't change.  Fang's only shred of character development was in a sidequest with Zazh.  Hope somewhat changed, but not much, they kinda thew him away after you unlock Alexander.  Vanille didn't change, you just got her backstory.  So where was the character development again?  Like I agree you that characters got a bit, which is what chapter 7 and 8 were (Which as I stated before, was extremely well done), but after that everyone but lightning reverts back until you get near the end and everyone's like "Let's save Cocoon... by destroying Cocoon!"  cause you know, that made sense.

a good game, not as geat as the psone ff`s (or earlyer) but a rely good game i would say the last realy good.

does this sound like he cares about the cocoon society to you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a81ae7F8z6E

because to me this sounds more like he's hating the people of cocoon and needs the maker (which by the way is also mentioned) to start from the beginning. as for "Let's save Cocoon... by destroying Cocoon": you can see it as an irony that saving cocoon means destroying cocoon to free it's people from their dependency of fal cie and open their eyes for a new world.

One of my favorites games of all time. I played FFIV, FFVI, FFVII, FFVIII, FFX, FFXII, and FFXIII.

Of those I liked FFVIII and FFX the most. Although I am glad people did enjoy FFXIII, I really hated that game. I usually enjoy almost any type of game and any genre of game, as a contrast to my roommate who hates JRPGs and many others. But FFXIII really took the cake. Most arguments against it have already been said so I will not bother saying mine.

Back to FFX. I liked the characters a lot especially Auron and Kimahri. The world map was big enough, possibly bigger then my favorite FFVIII. The leveling system was great, could branch off anywhere you wanted. Blitzball was my 2nd favorite minigame below Triple Triad from FFVIII. I have finished the game like 10 times and I have 1 game that is just dedicated to blitzball lol. Summons were done best in FFX imo. Story was great, had a lot of important themes. The length of the game was good with the sidequests. Can take you 60 hours first playthrough plus sidequests for a lot of time. Obviously I can now beat it very quickly. Battle system was still fun and on the first playthrough can be challenging.

Currently trying to finish FFXII and it is really fun too. Already 30-40 hours into it.