Just wondering. I saw gameplay and it looked fun to play and it's on sale on steam presently. Lemme know whats up.

Story-wise no, but it has all the characters from the previous games in some form so I'm not quite sure how they'd come across without knowing them. The game assumes you know them. It takes place 500 years after 13-2, 13 days before the end of the world and when you meet the characters, they aren't playing the same role as they use to.

The reason to play this game is for the super fun combat and addictive loop. The story is in the it's so bad, you might actually enjoy the ridiculousness territory.

@liquiddragon: thanks, man. Really concise.

Most people will argue that the story/characters of all the XIII games is bad. I'm one of the few that finds them fairly endearing at times, with some truly effective moments of emotion and even ennui throughout the three games. Lightning Returns actually gives some great closure to some of the characters--if you've seen their entire arc. The ideas of the story are also pretty intriguing (if poorly fleshed out), but you don't need experience with the other games to get most of that.

At the same time, I realize I'm in the minority on this. If you're someone who has a hard time seeing past anime/video game tropes in characters, you probably won't give a damn about seeing more of them. Also, the idea of going through two other decently long RPGs just to get to Lightning Returns, which I think is the best game in the trilogy and one of the best FF games period, is maybe a bit much: I'd much rather suggest at least playing through Lightning Returns and maybe going back to the others later.

Given how terrible they all are, you're probably better off just playing Lightning Returns. It has the best combat of the three, and the second worst story behind 2's inane tripe. It is also inane tripe. It also has a very much take-it-or-leave-it time limit mechanic. Picking among the XIII trilogy is an exercise in self-flagellation. It's like trying to pick out the least grimy turd.

I don't know. My favorite game growing up was Dragon Warrior so I'm kind of into grinding and stuff.

Depends if you care about the story and the setting (I find the setting very compelling), if you do you should play XIII, youtube XIII-2, and play LR.

LR tied into XIII heavily in theme, but picks up pretty closely to the events of XIII-2.

The gameplay in LR is quite different, you don't grind exp and levels. You get stronger by completing quests. The game is actually pretty hard to grind effectively early on.