I honestly could not get past the atrocious and unengaging battle system in FFXIII and the characters are mostly annoying, more so than any other FF title I ever played. In addition; the game is extremely linear for the first 15-20 hours and I can't remember a single tune from the entire production; which is a first in a FF game for me.
It's not a horrible game, but it's not a very good one either and it is horrible when measured against the best in the series.

Story - Things I liked about the story so far: 

- The premise. I didn't realize how cool of a premise it was last time because I was looking too much at the flaws. Multiple groups of people converge into the same point and are tasked with the same responsibility, all of whom handle it differently. 

- No character is marginalized to side-character #1, 2, etc. In some ways this can be bad though. 

- The lore is actually, indeed, comprehensible if you read the logs. They should not not have used "cie" in every specialized term, that is what confuses most people I think. Also it took me a full two hours to recall that there are Fal'cie on the side of the government and Fal'cie which the government opposes - "pulse Fal'cie." It took a bit of confusion after reading that the Fal'cie didn't bother too much with the human government. Anyway, I started to remember some plot points from my last playthrough after that. 

Story - Things I still don't like so far: 

- The literary voice (not voice-acting) of some of the characters is a bit cringeworthy, but that comes with every JRPG, although I feel as if that is true of this game especially. 

-  Overdoing character interactions. Yes, I know Lightning is pissed off at everything, and especially Snow, but can you tone down on how many times she hits him in a dramatic cutscene? It makes her seem less realistic of a character. 

Gameplay

- My opinion of the gameplay is quite similar to before. Why do I need to even control the character? I'm just going straight always. Combat is pretty boring, until a boss battle, then it becomes marginally difficult, and therefore marginally interesting. It isn't hard to get five stars in normal combat. Why does it take so long for me to be able to choose my party leader? Why couldn't they do that from the start of the game? 

- I like the speed of battles, and the paradigm shift system is fun when it needs to be used, most of the time it doesn't really need to be used. Boss battles are the exception, but usually that becomes repetitive even. 

Graphics

Much crisper and nicer than I remembered. The world is quite vibrant at 1080p (with the equivalent of 4 x SSAA through downsampling.) I have standard v-sync applied so the cutscenes and battles run at 60 fps (with a few drops down to 50 fps), but when I walk in the world I am locked to 30 fps. Sometimes during in-game cutscenes there is some slowdown to 20fps, but it only happens oddly when the camera is focused on Lightning AND certain background elements. Overall it feels pretty fluid. 

Sound

The music is quite great in this game. It definitely fits the world. I remembered wondering why I didn't like any of the songs in Final Fantasy Theatrhythm Curtain Call, as I recalled enjoying it in my first FFXIII playthrough. I guess the music in this game, as opposed to other Final Fantasy games, requires more context. 

Well, some opinions may vary a bit. I found them to be very uninspiring myself. 

I dunno, playing a JRPG on a PC just seems.........wrong. Can't put my finger on it. I remember being extremely confused when The Last Remnant got a PC release.

FF11/14 is different cases offcourse.

It is the same way I would play it on console, except with a 360 controller instead of PS3. The advantage is that I can play it at 60fps with much, much higher image quality (1080p 16 x MSAA or 1080p 4x SSAA + better texture filtering.) 

Yea the only thing I miss about going back to PC gaming was JRPGS. Then again the problem is JRPGS just aren't done very well anymore on top of the fact that they are barely released on consoles so I'm not missing much.

I've thought about giving this game a try but I always back out. 

FF XIII is Demon's Souls doppleganger. One is a mediocre game with no pedigree made into a magnificent cult-classic by fantastic direction. The other is a well known IP with oodles of love and effort poured into it, ruined by terrible direction.

Also, XIII's plot or vocabulary was not incomprehensible. I understood the plot fine the first playthrough, never reading a single datalog. If anything, it spoon-feeds you the vocabulary early on; it's not incomprehensible. It's just bad.

this is actually one of my favorites Final fantasy games. Oh my how different opinions can get XD

Fair enough. : )