My turn to ask about convincing me to play this game

[Axem Titanium]

XIII is the only main series game I haven't played and beaten, not so much because I dislike it but because it just slipped through the cracks. I own both it and XIII-2 so your job is to convince me to put it up to the top of my Backloggery, if you so desire. Why should I play this game next as opposed to any other game?

[Jinx]

You obviously paid money to own this game, so play it.

[Gamblet]

You obviously paid money to own this game, so play it.

Well, duh!

[WildRaubtier]

Yeah why not play it if you paid for it already?

The battles are pretty fun??

[Weimar Pluto Knight VII]

hcbailly doing a let's play on it got me to try it out, and like him, I ended up liking it even though I skipped 11 and 12 so far. I want to go back and try 12 again though. Yea the battles are fun. The story is still pretty good. The dungeons leave something to be desired at least at the beginning but it's not so bad later on and really opens up late in the game so yea try it out. I kinda wish the sidequests were better than mainly "go to boss and kill it" though. I didn't fall in love with it as much as I did FF7-9 but I still liked it enough to beat after not having owned it for very long. Don't worry about the bashers that say it sucks. The dungeon design leaves something to be desired and the story and characters aren't everyone's cup of goddamn tea (whoops wrong game lol) but the game definitely doesn't suck. Give it a chance!

[Nightsintodreams]

This is the one game where it honestly feels like the whole world is literally out to get you, and will not stop until the life is throttled out of you. The characters are always on the run, and even in towns...there is no where safe.

The game is very linear, but I feel like that actually lends itself over into the whole 'have to keep running or else will be killed' game aesthetic.

Its also a 60 hour game, and that is with taking the time to farm up the ultimate weapons. Definitely one of the shorter games in the series.

[Evastio]

So besides the linearity of the game and having 2/3rds of your team AI controlled and the Paradigm system, where you practically change classes in mid-battle, how different is it compared to other FFs?

[Laddy]

It has one of the best characters while having one of the worst casts.
It has some of the coolest locations with one of the worst settings.
It has some of the best songs but on of the worst soundtracks.

Basically, there's some diamonds in the rough worth a moment of your time. If only a moment...

[Bolivar]

Well you might want to play it for the same reason people who don't like James Cameron see Avatar or Titanic. It's still impressive to behold what an experience it is and all the production values that went into it.

In a console generation filled with military shooters, sci fi space marines and generic high fantasy games, it's pretty awesome to see a Japanese developer come out the gate with some of the illest graphics, best animations, and just overall power of imagination with the cutscenes and how far out and original the world is. It's the main team of FF veterans who set their mark with FFVII (after having cut their teeth on FFV and FFVI), so even if you don't like the story or gameplay, you at least know it's going to be that "blockbuster experience" with characters and locations you haven't quite seen before.

The combat's pretty cool. It's not my favorite, and I could go on critiquing it for the rest of the night, but it serves. It lets you assign archetypes to each character and then mix and match them for synergy in order to take down foes. This makes it really cool for when you're at a part of the story where two characters are together trying to get out of a place. They're working together to survive as you're figuring out how to get them to work together in good combinations. It may not be my favorite, but it is a "next-gen" combat system.

It's also Final Fantasy. You gotta at least give the newest one a shot and see how they did on the HD generation. Even if you don't like it, at least you'll have played one of the most controversial games of this console generation and have an opinion about it.

I say go for it, pop it in, watch the opening cutscene, and if that doesn't get you to press start and click "New Game," I don't know what else will.

[Mirage]

If you can survive the retardedly on-rails first 20 hours, the game actually opens up and there is a lot of beautiful areas to look at.

And I don't mean just beautiful as in technical graphics quality, but the areas really really really make you want to be able to just pass through your TV screen and walk around there in person, and experience everything with every sense you've got.