but the battle system was terrible; at best you could time your character layouts and that was it. The entire game's battle system came down to 'switch to one of 24 possible battle positions at the right time'. You couldn't control your secondary and tertiary characters, if your main character died it was game over, and with the exception of chapter 11 the game might as well have been a rail shooter. 

And the story was easily the worst in any FF game. Possibly the worst told in ANY game. Seriously, you shouldn't have to do homework to understand who characters are or why they're important to the story. The in-game datalog is fine for stuff like enemies or bosses, but when you have to scour through hundreds of pages of datalogs just to get key plot elements, that's a failure of narrative. 

I just don't see any good in it. The main characters were flat and one dimensional, I don't even REMEMBER who the end boss/antagonist is (Barthandalus or something?), the plot was poorly told, the world was poorly developed, there was virtually no exploration or side content, the combat was rigid and fundamentally flawed, and it was WAY too linear. I don't mind Linear, but after playing VII, X, and XII in quick succession, getting platinum trophies on all of the above, I can honestly say that linearity has NO PLACE in Final Fantasy. Having a Linear story is one thing - almost all games do that - but having it so there's almost no exploration except one small area is not okay. Even Final Fantasy X had exploration and branching paths and a lot of world variation and engaging endgame content.

I just don't get how anyone likes Final Fantasy XIII. I really don't. PEople have told me dozens of times but it's like a scat fetish to me. I understand the appeal on paper and in theory based on what folks have told me but it's still people turned on by shit. 

And don't get me wrong, FFVII, VIII, IX, X, XII, and XV all have problems - some of them quite significant - but XIII is just bad from almost every angle. 

Haaaaa! I certainly appreciate your passionate condemnation of FF XIII, even though I disagree with the general sentiment. The thing though, is this: I have posted about my love of this game a few times over the years, on this site, and in other forums, and whatever level of detail I may have been able to go into at those times, is now largely lost on me. It's been a WHILE. Many days have passed, and I've played hundreds of games since I completed FF XIII. I can neither adequately refute your claims, nor present enough of my own ideas as to why i liked it so much. At this point, most of what remains is simply the idea that I liked it. And I did! There's no denying that. The only things that I can remember truly disliking are: The VERY slow start to the proceedings, which almost turned me away before things got rolling, and the obnoxious post-game, item drop lottery plat grind.

Haaaaa! I certainly appreciate your passionate condemnation of FF XIII, even though I disagree with the general sentiment. The thing though, is this: I have posted about my love of this game a few times over the years, on this site, and in other forums, and whatever level of detail I may have been able to go into at those times, is now largely lost on me. It's been a WHILE. Many days have passed, and I've played hundreds of games since I completed FF XIII. I can neither adequately refute your claims, nor present enough of my own ideas as to why i liked it so much. At this point, most of what remains is simply the idea that I liked it. And I did! There's no denying that. The only things that I can remember truly disliking are: The VERY slow start to the proceedings, which almost turned me away before things got rolling, and the obnoxious post-game, item drop lottery plat grind.

Sorry to bust the bubble here. FFXIII is an abomination. Not just a terrible FF, but a terrible JRPG. It was the game that finally made me boycott the entire series afterwards .You must be trolling...or you have never played any RPGs before XIII.

At this point, most of what remains is simply the idea that I liked it. And I did! There's no denying that.

Nostalgia's a powerful thing! 

Oh, and yes, saying 'it gets better 20 hours in' is not a good thing to say about any game, even one that could last you 100 hours or more. FFXIII is the catalyst for the "Rule of 13", which means that if a game hasn't interested me after an hour, I stop playing. if it hasn't grabbed me after 5, I won't play. So it has one hour to pique my interest and if I don't love it after 5 I give up. I have too many games on my shelf that are waiting to be played, I can't waste 20-25 hours on a game I only kinda like. If a game wants more than 5 hours of my time it has to be pretty good. 

That's why I like shorter games, now. I'll play the occasional epic, but for the most part I prefer my games to be 8-12 hours, max. 

I got off topic. I'm sorry. My hatred for FFXIII is legendary, and I gave XIII-2 a 5.2/10 on this website back when it came out (which is better than the 2.1 I gave XIII in my personal rankings) 

I'm positive that if you were to replay it nowadays, you'd enjoy it immensely still. I've replayed XIII throughout the years and I always do love it every single time. It took me a long of time to play it due to the ongoing hate bandwagon unfortunately, but when I finally gave it a chance, I just loved it. I do agree that the very prologue of the game takes some adjustment, but once it gives you the power to experiment for a bit, then it really starts to shine.

C'mon maaaan. Burst my bubble? You haven't burst anything. No need to apologize. I could get into an argument with George Costanza about The Moops and still bounce my way home. I like FF XIII, and no amount of posts from others telling me how much it sucked is going to change that. I'm well aware of it's contentious standing in the mainline series among the hardcore FF fanbase. One post up from you is text that indicates I played FF 6 and 7, and FF Tactics, so it's obviously not the first JRPG I played. I'm one of the older members here. My first JRPG was Dragon Warrior, at which point, YOU were the baby being held up in pictures. Well maybe toddler. :) I didn't "get it" though even though I had some experience with, and enjoyed, some WRPG's on the C64. I think the first JRPG I liked was FF II on the SNES. Not trolling either. I'm more of a flamer. And please don't interpret this as aggro. I'm not even a little annoyed. Slightly surprised maybe, but that's it. 

Most assuredly. I've been hoping for an HD remaster trilogy set. I realize it's unlikely, but I'd buy it for sure. I have doubts that I'll be going back to the PS3 to re-start XIII-2 and start up XIII-3, but maybe someday.