Is Final Fantasy XIII worth playing?

I've never played FF13 before, and I was wondering if it was worth playing. I'm kinda iffy on getting it, mostly because I've heard good and bad things about it. What do you guys think?

It's my second favorite in the series. I say it's definitely worth playing! But is it worth buying? I guess that depends on what you like in a Final Fantasy game. What specific concerns do you have? o:

My only concerns are how well the characters are developed and the difficulty. I don't mind the linearity that I've heard about at all, though.

I guess the characters are a love or hate thing. The character development was my favorite thing about the game. Even Hope! The difficulty is in my opinion, almost perfect. You'll find that the game heavily discourages you from powerleveling. You don't need to and really you can't except for one area towards the end of the game. Boss encounters will keep you on your toes. When you get stuck, instead of power leveling like most people tend to do in other entries in the series, you come up with a new strategy, adjust your Paradigms as necessary, and try it again. Buffs, debuffs, and status effects are useful. There are some fights where you need to bide your time, making your party stronger and weakening the enemy, and there are some where you'll need to be quick and shift your Paradigms every few seconds. One nice thing about FFXIII is that it removes the tediousness a lot of RPGs have.

(Paradigms, if you didn't know, are job sets. You have a deck of six Paradigms. In each Paradigm you assign each of your party members a role. So you'll have a Paradigm where say, Lightning is a healer, Snow is a defender, and Sazh is casting buffs on your party, and when you're good and ready switch to one mid-battle where all three party members are in attacking roles.)

With your description of it, the battle system alone makes me want to play the game!

Yeah, it's pretty sweet. Here it is in action if you wanna see it:

Final Fantasy XIII Battle system gameplay - YouTube

One thing that bugs some people is that you only control the party leader in battle. AI is good for the most part. My only complaint is that it can get kind of wonky with Esuna. If your party leader dies, it's game over. However, you can restart just before the encounter rather than your last save point.

EDIT:

Oh, one thing that I thought was pretty neat. In some battles there are opposing monster groups. In that video the wolfy monster things were actually fighting the Behemoth before that battle started. If you can sneak up on those encounters and get a pre-emptive strike, they'll usually continue to attack each other rather than your party. If you defeat one group, the other group will start attacking your party. You can whittle down two really tough minibosses without getting a scratch on your party if you manipulate things just right!

The battle system looks really fun, actually. I think I'll get the game. Are there any differences between the 360 and PS3 versions?

Not really. From what I understand, 360 version has a smoother framerate, but the PS3 looks a tad better and loads slightly faster. And the 360 version has three discs whereas the PS3 version has one. I doubt you'll notice a difference unless you have this really badass TV. I played the 360 version on a sucky TV and had no complaints besides the HP being difficult to read.

I see. Then I guess I'll pick up whatever version I find first.

The resolution on the PS3 FMVs is quite a bit higher, but as mentioned you won't be able to notice without the TV to back it up.