First of all, don't get me wrong - I consider myself a fan of the FF series.  I played the old 2D ones on the NES, I played FFVII to death on the PS1 and played through a good chunk of FFVIII too! 
 
The fact of the matter is though, I'm just not feeling the love when it comes to FFXIII, and I'm not entirely sure why.
 
I''m impressed by the visuals of FFXIII, the introductory scenes are suitably impressive and the action is exciting and fast paced.  You quickly learn that Lightning is former member of Soldier or a member of Soldier and that erm... Well, erm... To be honest that's more or less it - there's a host quirky, obviously Japanese culture inspired characters, living in this thing called 'Cocoon' and erm, there's loads of fighting with little cut-scenes...
 
Hmmmph!  This is really not going as well as I'd hoped.  The trouble is, I find the plot at this stage is completely mind-boggling, all this talk of Purges, and Fal Cie and L'Cie and god knows what else, and Cocoon and Soldier and the wierd thing where you all go off to to fight a Fal'Cie - with no real information on how everything fits together.  I can't feel any empathy for the characters, or at least hardly any - because the world which they inhabit is so wierd and obviously alien to ours.  I mean VIII with it's Garden and the two warring nations and the Empress, it sort of had that FF quirkiness, it was fun and interesting, and just a little bit odd-ball.  FFVII with Midgar and the Golden Saucer and it's Weapons and Chocobo's was the same - but FFXIII is just, well, just... I just find the whole story completely confusing.  I literally have no idea what is going on!
 
Now I'm normally quite good at following a plot, even complex, multilayered plots such as Matrix Trilogy, Incpetion, and those sort of off-the-wall stories.  But I just don't get FFXIII.  
 
The experience isn't helped by the fact that so far the most effective method of winning in combat appears to be to click auto-battle, and if I do try to use the Abilities menu there's never more than a choice of two actions anyway... The only tactical decision I'm able to make usefully is whether to use a potion or not.  They may as well have just had a 'Press A to use a potion' thingie at the bottom of the screen for this first section.  And also the variety of enemies to fight at the start is just silly, it seems so pointless having you grind your way through mountains of clone-a-likes when you can't even progress your character any.
 
I really want to like FFXIII, I'm desperate to!  So much so that I'm going to plough through it and play the whole game even if I don't enjoy it.  Who knows, maybe now my characters have become L'Cie (whatever the F&*$ that means...)  I will get more tactical decisions to make and feel like combat isn't simply a case of press attack, use a potion if your low on health... Maybe I'll even start to understand what the 'blazes' is going on in the bat-shit crazy world which the game takes place in...
 
Until then - it's going to be a bit of a grind....
 
I will re-post about my experience with it after a couple more hours, hopefully more positively!