I love how the thread-starter has called for champions of the game to come out and yet still people who openly dislike the game have come along and posted anyway.

The characters made this game so much more enjoyable for me. I liked every one of them, although near the end I'll concede that Hope got a little too much of an "adult-kid" for my tastes. Making president's speeches and all. But the playable characters, their personalities, the development they go through, the changes we see slowly - or quickly, if it's called for - changes happen in their mindset due to unfolding events... all of that. I just really liked it. The dialogue for the most part was pretty good too, especially the stuff we saw between Sazh/Vanille during their little journey.

The battle system worked for me. I liked how it was a bit more tactical for a lot of the tougher enemies, and I definitely enjoyed the level capping involved so that you didn't just grind your way up and then walk through the boss battles. I didn't think I'd like that, but I did.

I liked the weapon upgrade system. It wasn't absolutely perfect when it comes to how easy it was to get the final weapons, but the upgrade process overall worked for me.

Obviously, the graphics were amazing. The voice acting was well done, too.

Frocobo. 'nuff said about that.

The differences and atmosphere in the two different worlds is noticeable and that for me means they got the atmosphere of the game in general sorted out pretty well for me.

I love that you could finish the game and then go back and carry on leveling. I also loved that you could get trophies. Both of these things are something I wish every FF could have.

Some of the settings were breathtakingly beautiful.

And possibly the most-liked thing outside of the characters for me was the mythology. It was perfectly balanced to provide a lot of debate amongst ourselves in these forums about what was happening with the Gods and all that, whether certain things were true or simply rumour/fiction, and yet still despite the many things you could debate you still could get a good idea over how things were. It's actually quite similar to a lot of religions in today's world. But it's actually kind of fun/interesting to debate a religion/mythology in a video game, unlike the real world where debating religions is generally rather tiresome.

I really liked what they did with the game, my only real complaint would be the lack of things to do that don't involve fighting. I just... liked it.

EDIT: Oh, I also loved the music, but I didn't really notice it in the game because of the massive number of sound effects and dialogue that you are listening to instead of any background music. I suggest jumping onto YouTube and checking out the various FFXIII character themes... they are indeed lovely.