I never liked the character sof XII to be honest. I'm in the middle of the third disc of XIII at the moment (but also on the newly bought Fable III, so it's on hold now), and it's def not a bad game, but nothing special either. I couldn't help but getting sucked into the story anyway. I do quite like Lightning and Snow to be honest.
FF, Kingdom Hearts but also Prince of Persia were like the only games which could interest me enough to actually finish them rather than just quitting mid end. I got hooked at FF around FF X, although I never could find a PS2 cd of FF 7, which supposedly is the best one (along with X depending on taste).
