Honestly when it comes to any good RPG, Id argue exploration is just as important as combat and story. And FF1 is surprisingly good at that. Then it sprinkles in some adventure elements, like when Titan wont let you through the cave because hes hungry for jewels. Then when you find a find a ruby in some random cave, youre like oh shit, I bet I know who wants this. Or when you find a dwarf who will make you the ultimate weapon if you bring him adamant. And you go the whole game wondering where adamant could be, only to find it in outer space towards the end. Like finally you see why adamant is so rare, and also its just an exciting moment when you open a random chest and there it is.
FF13 has none of that. It doesnt respect its player enough to let them explore its world. Its practically a walking sim, but with a few extra bells and whistles.
FF1 can also be pretty challenging at times - like even something as simple as poison can be pretty deadly early on. Antidotes are expensive, and like half the enemies can poison you. Let alone the fact that you cant revive characters mid-battle, so if someone goes down, theyre down for the entire fight. It really forces the player to pay attention to every single battle, because its almost always life or death, kinda like old skool Dragon Quest.
Meanwhile heres FF13 over here with its auto-potion.
And the warriors of light might be silent protagonist/player avatars, but honestly Ill take that over the bad characterization in FF13. Its why everyone loves Samus, but hated her in Other M.
FF1 introduced so many iconic staples to the series, and FF13 is just a derivative iteration at best, and a huge step backwards at worst.
I recently played FF1 on NES and yes, id rather play that than FF13, straight up.
This is a good summary of why FF13 is flawed, yeah. It sacrifices everything at the altar of the story but then its story fucking sucks, and they knew it sucked before launching too because they took out the true main character (Serah) and were like 'this'll work anyways right???'. Just a baffling game top to bottom.