I enjoyed XIII the first time around. I had that "NEW FF GAME!" hype, and I let myself be in awe as I played the game. Even despite that hype, there were things that bothered me. For one, it took way too long for the leveling system to come into play. They give you all those battles before they even introduce the leveling up thing, and you don't get any crystarium points or anything before it's introduced. With the linear, skinny hallway design I found myself getting involved in a number of battles, and I just had no incentive and it frustrated me. The music was also not appreciated at first. I missed the style of Nobou, and certain things grated on me (like the music that plays after you finish a battle). It grew on me and I came to like the music. I also wasn't a fan of the monster design. It's true that they avoided palette swaps and such for much of the game, but the designs weren't doing it for me. The overall plot was meh, but I cared enough about the characters to enjoy their interactions and wanting to see their story play out. Barty was a terrible antagonist.

Second time around, the game was unplayable. I knew at that point for sure that the battles at the beginning did nothing for me, and I was just annoyed with it all. There was also nothing new to discover in my second play through. Yes, all FF games are linear in terms of storytelling, but XIII lacked towns and NPCs and a world map. Those all do a lot for world building, and it's just fun on subsequent playthroughs to run into things that you never noticed before. Some characters grew on me (like Snow) while others became weaker in my eyes (like Lightning). In any case, I knew everything that would happen in the game and already wasn't really in love with it, so I just found myself bored.

XIII-2 was pure fun. I was addicted to monster collecting, and I even considered trying to platinum the game for a time. I didn't, but it's probably the closest I've gotten to platinuming a game. Caius made for a much better villain than Barty from the first game. Not only did he have more presence, but it was easy to sympathize with why he was doing the things he did. This game was where the lore and mythology really started to kick into gear, and it's great. Yes, the "To be continued" is dumb. Yes, the plot is a bit convoluted. Yes, it would have been nice to have more focus on characters like Sazh. Yes, relegating some important plot points to DLC was dumb (also Sazh's DLC was awful). Despite all that, it's my favorite of the XIII trilogy, and I find myself wanting to play it again pretty regularly. I also think the overall story in this one is quite excellent. I liked some of the risks they were trying to make with it (outside of the To Be Continued), and I actually liked the ending. I'm crazy and one of the few who did though. Music was fantastic too.

Lightning Returns had a lot of great pieces to make a great game. It fell a bit short for me, though. I liked the adult Hope of XIII-2 (in design and just his personality), so seeing kid Hope again was a step back. But he was just a shell of his character anyways in regards to his emotions and whatnot for story reasons. Lightning talked about being void of emotions all the time like it was some new thing, but she happened to show more emotion throughout this game than in any of the other series I felt. It was nice to see her character fleshed out more, but I still find her a boring character. The world in LR was pretty well done. There were a lot of interesting things like the guitar playing guy that just added life to the world, and it was cool to see NPCs and all these people about. I liked the darker tone to everything as well. I still am not a huge fan of the combat though. Lightning moves so slow in battle that certain mechanics promised (hitting different parts of enemies to find weaknesses for staggering) just didn't work as well as I envisioned. There was a lot of customization though, and that was cool. It was cool seeing all sorts of different people, but then the random nature of people wearing ridiculous accessories often pulled me out of the game and left me shaking my head. The plot was interesting, and it was cool to see how all the characters were coping with what was happening around them. It still felt a bit weak to me though, and I found myself more interested in working out the mythology behind the game than the story itself. I didn't really have an interest in playing it again afterwards.