I enjoy freedom. Freedom to enjoy the game at my own pace and figure out how to beat a boss.

FFXIII made me do the opposite of what to think. Once you see what the game wants you to do exactly, which is just repeat all the same paradigms over and over, there really is nothing else to it, especially since the game chooses commands for you way more quickly and accurately than you ever could.

And yes, FFXIII plays itself much more than XIII becausw of the simple fact that you had to set up how it plays. If you set it up so that it actually played itself - well, that's awesome because you created a reliable AI script all on your own!

So the freedom to actually play how you want is what's missing thanks to the lack of grinding. And ots not that I'm some compulsive grinder - it's just that getting progressively stronger is one of the most satisfying elements of an RPG. XIII completely took away that feeling by imposing some incredibly stupid barrier, killing any incentive to actually go out there and battle. I see it as only a means to mask how hollow the system is underneath. Because you'd still struggle in FFXII if you were overleveled and you didn't thing. If they let you overleveled in XIII, everything would fall apart because the game is super easy as it is. So in order to obscure that design flaw, to create the illusion that you can't press X to win, they have us level caps, making sure we don't disobey the game's benevolent creators. We can't have that now, can we. That's the essence of fake difficulty which I stand by and I will defend my right to use the term to the death.