" FF-XIII-2 has good battle system!"

lol

According to the credible ranking of this actual Final Fantasy fan who played every single game in the franchise I can safely say that the FF13 saga is on rank 2.

You're better off just revisiting Xenoblade Chronicles, a game that greatly influenced JRPGs more than Final Fantasy XIII, and for good reason. Hell, it even inspired Final Fantasy XV more than Final Fantasy XIII (which was originally Versus XIII a linear game and changed to XV an open world game).

What can be said about XIII beyond the fact it's the first single player Final Fantasy without any of the most influential creators save Namura and the guy who makes the score of Final Fantasy, not that you'd even know because most of the music isn't an updated or different approach to any of the old Final Fantasy music (at least in the first XIII, I played part 2 for a handful of hours and barely touched XIII-3 at all, but I did beat XIII). Not to mention the music shoved in everyone's face in advertising was a Leona Lewis "My Hands" song not even in the Japanese version if I'm not mistaken. But let's move on.

What can be said about XIII (at least the original) that fits more perfectly than style over substance. You'll notice when you look at everything, it looks very good, too bad there just isn't much to do here. What do I mean by that? I mean roles that you level up are just as linear as the game itself. You choose the role you want to level up, then it has a skill tree that is mostly line to line leveling based on how many skill points you have. And they are mostly exactly the same for every character, bar a few branches (and by this I usually mean literally one additional skill you can choose either or then back to the straight line path) you go from skill to skill in a straight line. Oh, and the ones who get the very few additional skills are people who are naturally leaning toward that class. Like Lightning (and I almost threw up in my mouth a little just typing the name) will have 2 or 3 additional soldier skills than Hope, while hope will have a few more saboteur skills than Lightning. Mostly negligable though, and the actual skill tree is pretty sparse even if the character gets the few extra skills.

Beyond the level system, the combat's pretty shallow, and if you Libra the enemy the game can literally play itself. (Libra detects the skills most damaging to an enemy, and there is an auto battle function which will do everything to include changing the classes of you characters back and forth to heal, etc.) As for customization you get to add two accessories and a weapon... and that's it. And you can either buy these weapons from floating orbs that act like "shops" or you can use materials to create new weapons. I made a weapon with parts once, that's it, and I bought weapons every time an orb came up and I beat the game with absolutely no problem. And that about it for your character. The only aesthetic changes that can be made to your guy btw is the weapon (a bit, it mostly just changes color) and your two accessories (like Lightnings earrings will change from blue to black).

As far as the world, it may look cool, but looking cool is all it will ever do (again for the original XIII) No real interaction with towns, there's even a Gold Saucer like area you go to (forget the name) and there is literally nothing you you to do there. The entire world is just a pretty back drop... And that's it, nothing else to really say about the world.

And God there is SO much more I could write. It's a game specifically made for it's visuals, and they don't hold up. That's what I'm gonna leave it on. Again at least as far as the first XIII which is the one I really know.

Enjoyable, definitely too repetitive but they made some great strides in terms of strategy but the management was too macro.

Good characters and a solid story but some poor story telling and world building with most of the most interesting stuff left to datalogues.

In spite of its flaws i was actually able to finish it unlock FFXV which felt half baked by comparison even if its general openess appealed to my rpg sensibilities

hmmm maybe, I was so into the world that I read every single datalog and encyclopedia entry... maybe thats why I enjoyed it more. I cant disagree with you there as you are right about that, the game should not force you to read all that to understand it.

I once listend to a reviewer saying the same thing about FF15 that he didnt like the game but once he read everything from books, movies, all kind of datalogs he started to appreciate the rich world that they aparently built

I understood the story the first time round without these but it leaves a very bad taste in ones mouth without all the necessary world building. Comparably every final fantasy before this sewed every ounce of the world into playable and story segments.

Although FFXIII is a masterpiece compared to the aweful story telling FFXV which relies on entirely separate pieces of media like the CG film and anime to build its world. 

Agreed, at least in part. Story telling I think is one of its weaker points because it first the whole L'Cie and Fal'Cie stuff get confusing, peoples motivations change on a dime with no real satisfactory conclusion. It goes from "I wanna kill this person" to "nah let's be friends" way to quickly. Not to mention one aspect, and really the biggest aspect makes no sense at all, but that would be spoiler territory. The big twist basically.

It's a game that's not assaultingly bad but fails to live up to any other major jrpg franchise. That gen's Tales Of Vesperia is better, Xenoblade X is better, Persona 5 is better, I really can't think of a major jrpg that is worse and the reviews and receptions only go down from the first which didn't score well critically or consumer wise and for good reason. 

Final Fantasy 13.  It is the best of games and the worst of games.  Here is my experience with it.

Final Fantasy used to be my favorite series of games.  I would always buy the games day 1 and then just do nothing else in my life but work and then come home to play the games until I'd thoroughly beaten them including all endgame content.  So I bought Final Fantasy 13 and came home excitedly to play it.  The game looked stunningly gorgeous.  But I felt it kind of sucked (at first).  I only liked some of the characters, but the worst part is just walking down a hallway and fighting stuff that has no challenge.  There are no towns, and really nothing to interact with.  The story is only so-so and harder to follow the deeper in you get.  I kept playing out of spite.  I spent my $60 and I was going to get my money's worth damn it!  So I kept playing, and my wife and I would just make fun of it.

Then around 20-25 hours in, the game actually started getting good.  And when I got to Gran Pulse the game became amazing!  It turns out in the end I played 100+ hours of the game.  I think I played all of the optional content.  The game seriously left me wanting more.  

If I could somehow remove the first 20 hours of FF13, then it would probably be my favorite game on the PS3.  The last 80 hours of the game are that good.  But I've only played through the game once.  The first 20ish hours are just too painful.  I might actually play it again at some point, but I'm not really looking forward to it.

The sequels: FF13-2 and Lighting Returns are also seriously fun but seriously flawed games, but for different reasons.  I remember enjoying them both a lot, but at the same time Final Fantasy is not my favorite series anymore and it mostly has to do with the FF13 series.  I just don't trust Square-Enix to do a good enough job anymore.  They still make good games, but Final Fantasy is just not on the same amazing level that it used to be.

The problem I have with the story is the bad writing the actions of the villains make no damn sense they want you to complete a task then try to stop you but want you to succeed as well as the incredibly wtf moment of all this madness about showing their chosen a cryptic message when they can speak the bloody languages of the beings they're meddling with and the clowns can't seem to figure out how so many people are failing their tasks it's literally comical.

I think that's what frustrates me the most about it. Reading the Datalogs and backstory and supplementary material makes it clear that they put a LOT of effort into making a truly great world, one that has limitless potential for stories and characters and the like...but then forgot to incorporate any of it into the actual plot of the game. there's a great STORY to the world, but the plot of the game forgets any of it and none of it feels natural. It's remarkably shoddy storytelling, which is something you should never, EVER have in a JRPG. 

Like I said, stuff like Dark Souls can get away with having all the backstory and lore hidden away becuase part of the experience is around the idea that you're some nobody, an undead who doesn't fully understand what's going on. It suits the narrative if you just wanna go kill bosses and make your way through the world. Hell, I beat Bloodborne three times before I even realized there was an actual story and I loved it even before then! 

But Final Fantasy? Naw, you need the story to be well told and good. If the story fails, it doesn't matter how good the gameplay is. That's why I'm so torn on FFXV. The world building and character interactions were all mint...but the actual story was garbage. The relationship between the four mains was some of the best in any FF game, but the linear part of the game was lacking in every way, leaving a VERY sour taste in my mouth. I personally liked the gameplay, but I totally get why someone might not, since it's pretty simplified. 

I'm getting off topic, though. XIII fails. It looks pretty and it sounds pretty, but the gameplay and the story fail miserably (And personally I couldn't stand the art direction, finding it boringly generic; reminded me more of Halo than a FANTASY game. Sterile and empty and boring and generic.)