They needed more hair gel 

Enough of this already

FFVIII is actually my favourite, and still is...so comparing it to that is a positive for me. 
 
That said, while I like XIII it ranks in at a solid #4 for me anyway.   
 
PS Auto-battle is a bad crutch when you're working on some things later on, I'd break the habit for most things besides healing.  Especially for roles like Ravager, Synergist, or Saboteur.

Auto battle isn't mandatory, you know. If you want, you can start mashing in buttons or using the repeat ability command.
 
I only do auto battle when I'm a medic; I suck at healing. >_<

I am really liking the new combat system and the elimination of MP and refilling hp at the end of each fight. More then anything else big thumbs up to Square for realizing that not everyone play's on a HD tv and made the game scale to 480

I think FFXIII does a lot of good.  The fact that no matter who is in your party, they earn XP, even if they're not in your party.  This is really what XII needed.  Potions for the entire group is cool, but I wish it applied to all items.

Will anybody ever talk about the good things and only the good things?

" Will anybody ever talk about the good things and only the good things? "

The thing with just choosing auto battle in all battles in FFXIII, is that just swapping paradyms is essentially the equivalent of picking your skills anyway, there really isn't a single bit less strategy than most other FF games.
 
 
 I like the Linearity, I can see why it would bother some people though.
 
I agree with the camera though, the camera tries too too hard to be dynamic and exciting in battle, and just ends up annoying.
Drat that camera. I've lost battles because I was just spamming auto battle on the last, almost dead enemy, not bothering to heal up and then the enemy dies and there was a smaller enemy hiding behind him that kills me.
Because the camera wiggled it's way into a bad position

" What really annoys me about the battle system is the placing of characters, you have literally no control of were they chose to stand on the battle field, sometimes it's ok, but I've lost a fair shout of fights because my group decides to all clump together against a monster that hits an area effect attack for pretty heavy damage. SPREAD OUT YOU BASTARDS! "

" @Soap said:

" What really annoys me about the battle system is the placing of characters, you have literally no control of were they chose to stand on the battle field, sometimes it's ok, but I've lost a fair shout of fights because my group decides to all clump together against a monster that hits an area effect attack for pretty heavy damage. SPREAD OUT YOU BASTARDS! "

I actually agree completly with this. Figured I'd offer some help that a minor solution to this is to delibratly set them to different roles for a second just to move them around. This doesn't allways work, but making 3 people into Comando's has a habit of making all 3 of them split up to attack different targets, and then you can reset there paradigm. It's dumb that the game makes you do this, but I hope this advice helps you out. "

In the games deffence, it'd be more then a simple bug fix patch to add in a system where by you could order your sqaud into formations to move around.
As silly as it is, I think the game was intended this way, not on oversight. (still kind of an oversight, but you know what I mean).
 
It's why comando's are programmed to try and attack different targets, that was there way of having you control it.

" @Shadow: What? People having opinions on a game and then posting about them? "