I am extremely critical of some of the things FFXIII tried, but I thought some stuff did work.

1. Character development, for the first 7-8 chapters at least, was very good. You really got to know every character, and the game delved into their backstories. Sazh was the best example of a understandable character who reacted surprisingly realistically for a hero in an RPG. The gameplay, of course, was crap during that time, but each character's story was developed very well.

2. I actually like parts of the battle system. It was new and for much of the game fairly engaging and involved some level of strategy. While not as good as FFXII's system overall, I thought each game did certain things well. It tried to simple things down from FFXIII, but ended up going TOO simple. It definitely needed something more control options, such as more paradigms and an ability to control the AI if one chose to (sort of like an optional gambit system), but overall I thought it was mildly enjoyable, and warrants a little slack for being new and different.