Yeah, my expectations for this game were so high, but when I saw the first gameplay trailer, I was disappointed, probably because of those expectations. I'm doing the same thing as you now.
People either say that XIII is really good or really bad, it's very confusing. The rumors about Versus XIII were proven false yesterday: Wada: Final Fantasy Versus XIII Still in Development - FinalFantasy-XIII.net
I remember being so hyped up about that game in 2006... lol.
Oh, I haven't played XIII yet (I know I'm late), but I don't like X-2 and XII. X-2 is just hard to get into if you're a guy, but it has good gameplay, and I thought that XII just had a horrible story that did not make me care about the characters at all, but I did like the battle system.