I think you enjoy complaining about games more than you enjoy playing them *cough* bethesda *cough*. But whatever the reasons you like 13 are extremely subjective to you, so I cant argue your taste in story telling. But I like pokemon and dragon quest and I don't mind ham fisted exposition if the world thats being crammed down my throat is charming enough. But I'd rather play magic the gathering. 13-2 kept the one good thing about 13 (the battle system) and gave you essentially one big world as an extended side quest to collect shit and battle a lot. The characters were nearly as bad as 13 and the story line was nonsensical. But I played it as glorified bit of DLC as apposed to a full story experience and I had fun with it.

Nier was alright, didn't get extremely far in it, interesting enough but the battle system was crap.

And yes I think kingdom hearts have awful AWFUL battle systems I'd play 13 a million times before trying to sit through kingdom hearts 1 again.