I enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII, and for those who seem to think otherwise in this thread, I've also played every other Final Fantasy, and enjoyed the majority of them, so I'm not just jumping into the series. It had some problems, mine being some areas just dragged on and on. Fifth Ark being the biggest offender, should have ended after the first boss, instead of reusing the same rooms after to extend the dungeon. The ending was also atrocious, but that's another thing entirly. I question why you created this thread, considering you already seem to strongly hate the game, I don't think anything I could say would change that, I shall at least indulge you and try, out of boredom if nothing else.
Story
The story wasn't the best I've heard by all means, but it worked for the most part(Again, excluding the ending, that seemed like it was pulled out of their ass, hated it). Yes, the first few hours, you're going to be asking yourself what in the world some of the terms mean. That isn't a flaw, that's a story telling technique, whether you like it or not is another thing entirely. It would be boring if they explained everything on a silver platter right off from the start. There wouldn't be any point in playing. By about three hours in, it does explain what l'cie and the fal'cie were. if you didn't see, then you weren't paying attention. Infact I believe thats the problem with a lot of people. They claim to find the story confusing and a mess. Yet I perfectly understood the story without even touching that log until well after the game to see what it says, so clearly it was explained.And as for using the word cie in all of them, that is because they're all connected. L'cies are the Fal'cies 'minions' and Cieth are what they turn into if they dont complete the task the Fal'cie gave to them. Those factions in X you mentioned may be factions, but they are completely unrelated otherwise, they have different views, so naturally their names would be different.
Characters and Development
You're right. All the other final fantasys did have towns. However, have you played another Final Fantasy where no matter where they are, they're wanted by a universal group? FInal Fantasy 7 had Shinra, however, they only controlled a few towns, and even the citizens didn't like Shinra that much, so they wouldn't tell. Final Fantasy 8 had Galbadia, however that was only a small continent. Now, in XIII, they're on the run from PSICOM, and to top it off, all the citizens are afraid of them because of the lies which PSICOm have been spreading for the past 1000 years. Now I don't know about you, but in my situation, I wouldn't be standing around shopping under those cirumstances. The only place that theoretically could have contained a town, was Nautilus, prior to Sazh and Vanille getting captured. That could have been home to some Golden Saucer type minigames, would have been nice possibly, but other than that, I couldn't see a town happening.
There was plenty of character development between the main six, it just happened throughout the story at certain moments, rather than only in towns. However, admittedly all the side characters sort of got left out. The biggest example being the PSICOM woman commander, who got killed before you could even battle her. Which admittedly was a bit sad. Although the novel does give some nice story to some of them, Like Rygdea. Which I do recommend you read if you do have any interest in finding out more about the characters.
Combat
I'll just tell you now, if killing the final boss took you 30mins, then you were either doing it wrong, or you were underleveled. Each part took me 2-4mins, infact I was pretty disappointed at it, you just have to go about the boss in the right manner I think my trick being to use Buffs and Debuffs at the start, go relentless assault untill fairly highly staggered, and then go Aggression, swapping to combat clinic if I ever needed healing. Very few random mobs ever posed any thread to me too, mainly the gigantic ones(Although you sort of expect those to be tough considering their size, it's unrealistic to think otherwise), and those boxes in pulse which summon adds. I thought it was nice that the random battles didn't account to mashing attack(Which lets face it, quite a few of random mobs do in other Final Fantasys). One of my favourite battles ever was actually the Rank 64 battle. That was an amazingly fun fight. It was tedious learning to swap to SEN SEN SEN at the correct time to avoid damage, but once you learn it, the battle always keeps you on your toes. I think what a lot of people forget is, you aren't meant to always have a medic in your team unlike other Final Fantasys. You should only swap party members into that class when you require healing, otheriwse it's wasting potential damage or stagger chaining. As for the hitpoints, unlike other games, you do far more damage, in other FF's your damage cap was 9999, in this it's 99,999 thus, to account for that, mobs have far more health.
I don't think the combat is perfect by all means. It could use some tactics settings so you can choose the order in which your allys will cast spells or pull of skills. As I felt myself getting annoyed at party members using Esuna instead of healing me.
Exploration
I'll agree there isn't much potential for exploration outside Pulse, but admittedly on Cocoon it's not like they have time to explore, considering the impending doom. X didn't have that much exploration either outside just before going to fight Sin though. You could backtrack, but that brings up the question of why would you want to? Exploration is all well and nice, but if theres nothing to find or see, well theres not much point in having it. Which is a problem I have with the GTA games, they have a massive map, but 70% of it has nothing but buildings you can't enter which results in it being tedious to get around. So yeah. I'll agree with you that there isn't much exploration, but I personally don't miss it considering the above.
Scores
Not everyone has the same opinion as you. I, still, to this day, question how Final Fantasy XII got all nines considering how boring I found it to be(Just not for me I guess, maybe how XIII doesn't seem to be for you?). But that's life isn't it. It would be incredibly boring if everyone had the same opinion, hehe.
