I have never played a Final Fantasy game before, so FF13 is really my first experience (I have played RPG's before thou). 
 
First off, the production values floored me. Its very clear that Square-Enix didn't skimp out here. So after the awesomeness of the visuals have worn off, I started to look at the game more objectively. First off the story didn't make any since at first. It's not that its a super complicated story, but they don't explain it very well. Its like they assumed you already knew the history of the world and the terms they keep throwing out like "Le'ci". The game does have a mass effect like codex thou, and after 5 minutes of reading it, the story made complete sense. Kind of weird that I had to read a couple of paragraphs to get the story; couldn't they just have explained it in there beautiful looking cut-scenes? The structure so far is very liner. I can tell I'm still in the setup part off that game, and I assume it will get more open later on. Still, I've been fine with the liner feel so far, and it hasn't bothered me. As for the combat, its a mixed bag. On the one end, I can tell that the combat will get more advanced later on; as I'm slowly getting little pieces added on. But on the other hand,  What I have to work with at the moment has been rather slow, with not much effect on my part. The only things I can do are attack, secondary attack, or auto-attack (which just picks one of them for me). When I comes to a combat structure like this, it seems like the fun and challenge is in picking strings of different moves and coming up with strategies for each enemy. So far, the game has been holding my hand so much that the fun and challenge of combat just isn't there. 
I plan on sticking with it thou; I like the characters (expect Vanille), and the story seems interesting. I just hope that the combat picks up, or I may not want to keep playing.

Don't worry... this game is gonna come back and kick your ass and then some.. give it another couple hours...

The reason they don't explain it directly to you is that it'd be very out of character.  The entire 'show, don't tell' philosophy.  Having Saze lecture you on what the world is like would just take you out of it, and be very poor storytelling.  They prefer to hopefully let you figure it out by context, but if you really can't they did include the datalogue as a crutch. 
 
Yes, the combat gets MUCH more involved, probably pretty soon from where you are at.  You'll unlock the paradigm and role system soon, and the difficult will ramp up by the boss of the next area.  

 Yes, the combat gets MUCH more involved, probably pretty soon from where you are at.  You'll unlock the paradigm and role system soon, and the difficult will ramp up by the boss of the next area.   "

" @Addfwyn said:

 Yes, the combat gets MUCH more involved, probably pretty soon from where you are at.  You'll unlock the paradigm and role system soon, and the difficult will ramp up by the boss of the next area.   "

I figured a much; I just don't like games that require a few hours to get good. "

I'd recommend breaking yourself of the habit of using auto-battle early on if you can help it.  The auto-battle is often somewhat questionable in how it assigns attacks, and will generally make fights take a bit longer by not properly using aoe or abilities that are more powerful in certain situations (basically it lacks context awaeness)
 
This will make it very difficult to get some of the trophies that require 5-staring specific fights, including the boss of the game, since it is based entirely on speed of completion.  You can probably get through a lot with the auto-battle, maybe even most of the game, but you probably won't do it with as high rankings as you can get otherwise.

" I'd recommend breaking yourself of the habit of using auto-battle early on if you can help it.  The auto-battle is often somewhat questionable in how it assigns attacks, and will generally make fights take a bit longer by not properly using aoe or abilities that are more powerful in certain situations (basically it lacks context awaeness) This will make it very difficult to get some of the trophies that require 5-staring specific fights, including the boss of the game, since it is based entirely on speed of completion.  You can probably get through a lot with the auto-battle, maybe even most of the game, but you probably won't do it with as high rankings as you can get otherwise. "

" I'd recommend breaking yourself of the habit of using auto-battle early on if you can help it.  The auto-battle is often somewhat questionable in how it assigns attacks, and will generally make fights take a bit longer by not properly using aoe or abilities that are more powerful in certain situations (basically it lacks context awaeness) This will make it very difficult to get some of the trophies that require 5-staring specific fights, including the boss of the game, since it is based entirely on speed of completion.  You can probably get through a lot with the auto-battle, maybe even most of the game, but you probably won't do it with as high rankings as you can get otherwise. "