XIII is in the middle of the pack for me as well, but that still means I like it A LOT. I kept saying it when it was new, but it honestly felt like that game was tailor-made for me, personally. I love linearity in jRPGs and the battle system was fast paced and exciting. What I loved about the battles in XII was that they went by quickly with a really small amount of input (which became ZERO input by the end of the game). In XIII the battles were really quick, but they made you stay on your toes as well. I can actually say that grinding was fun in both games.
The story was a bit lacking for me... interesting world, but they put far too much information in the codex, and not nearly enough in the cutscenes. With the storage available in this gen... there is really no excuse for that. Characters were cool as well. Lightning is probably me second favourite lead in the series after Squall, and I love the dynamics between the characters. I won't say any more because it's basically all spoilers... but I love the fact that you're not just a group of friends all traveling together to save the world... the relationships between the members of your party are actually quite complicated and extremely unique for a Final Fantasy game.
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