I'm in a weird place when it comes to FF XIII.
When XIII came out, nobody seemed to like it much. All I heard were complaints that it was too linear, no towns, too much sci-fi, blah blah blah. So I went into it with low expectations, and ended up pleasantly surprised. The story was pretty decent, the characters grew on me (well, except for Vanille, but that wasn't a deal-breaker), the pacing was good, and the mechanics felt solid. Based on that, I was pretty hyped about starting XIII-2.
Complete dead end.
I don't know why, but I can't seem to get into the game at all. Which is weird, since I like the whole time travel/alternate realities thing. Got to the first time area, beat the boss, and haven't gone back to it. Maybe it's that I feel compelled to do all the sidequesty stuff so I don't miss anything, which ends up with me having to talk to every single NPC and backtrack all the time, and makes things drag. I want to like this one, too. Maybe I just need to pick it up again when I'm in the right mood, I dunno.
XII-2 is great, but it takes a couple of hours before it opens up with where/when you can go... the side quest stuff you can always go back to IIRC.