Well, good luck with that. There are FF games I feel I need to go back and play, namely IX and XII as you mentioned.

XIII rates as the only one I'll never go back to. There was approx. 6 hours of content in the middle that I somewhat enjoyed where the story seemed to pickup and have more impact, and then the game opened up which was cool... until I realised it was just more fights. Then the story just got to that stage where I stopped caring.

So personally, I wouldn't bother, but as you've read up on the lore and backstory, maybe you'll pick up on stuff that I stopped caring about!

Rather download the last remnant

One of the worst games I played last gen. Plot, characters, combat, customisation......all shit. 0 redeeming qualities.

/This

In the past I thought people were mostly exaggerating the low quality of FFXIII because it was such an important franchise with high expectations and such. Then I played it. Whelp.

The plot is nonsense and the characters are fairly stupid. The graphics are good, but you explore Cocoon and Pulse on a rather linear fashion which gets tiring rather quickly. The only good things about it are the way the characters came together bound by a rather complicated and interesting situation, though SE didn't manage to do anything remotely compelling with it, and a certain cutscene where they crash a race, or something like that (I can't properly recall).

Oh, and not to mention the summons were transformers...

Well, just got to Chapter 2. So far the game is pretty much how I remember it, except the graphics. They are pretty gorgeous at 4k downscaled to 1080p. 

good luck to you

This games is the most disappointing FF ever, i dont like the world, i dont like the story and even more linear then FF X. This games should be an open world.

That's exactly what i did. Played the first two chapters on 360 and hated everything. The dialogue (the Norad stuff in particular. *shrugs*) made me suicidal and my friend who was watching facepalmed every five seconds or so.

I gave the game a second chance when it hit Steam and completed it this time. I really can't recommend this game to anyone. It's not just a bad Final Fantasy game, it's a bad game filled to the brim with awful story and dialogue, idiotic design choices and disappointment after disappointment. I curse my stubborness that made me 100% this mess and I feel more ashamed than proud over the stupid Treasure Hunter achievement. T_T On the bright side it made me allergic to silly achievements, which'll help me enjoy games a lot more.

No towns, no iconic music (and rarely does it fit the tone of the situation it is playing with), no characters really worth rooting for or relatable to, no real ending (if you just play the first), no NPCs to immerse you into the game, no exploration, no real physical customization, no real skill development freedom or personalization, nothing off the beaten path to discover, no useful weapon crafting (it just simply isn't worth your time), convoluted story that only gets more convoluted as you pick up the other installments....

Good luck even having fun. It's like the Mystic Quest of mainline Final Fantasies. Stripped and dumbed down in every single aspect from what you are expecting from the series.

I thought the battle music for it was good. I'd say it's the best thing about FFXIII.... : X