I don't know if it's the gameplay or the writing that you're having trouble with, but if it's the latter, you're not alone: I think it has overall the worst plot/characters/setting of the single-player FF games I've played (I haven't played XV or XVI). And XIII provides some really stiff competition in that regard.
I know it's an unpopular opinion, but for me, FFX has the best and deepest story of all FFs I played (which are 7, 8, a bit of 9, 10, 12), closely followed by 8.
7 and 8 suffer from too much arbitrariness for me, 10 is just the right kind of mixture of weirdness with proper storytelling for me, and with 12, Final Fantasy started to become bland.
I don't think it's an unpopular opinion. X is very popular (there's a reason there's so much sequel material for it). I just find the Zanarkand stuff to be a real lead weight on the story, and the emotional heft of the story requires you to care about Tidus, which I absolutely do not.
X-2 is silly but I at least sympathized with the characters. The entire party in X could be eaten by Sin for all I care.
It might actually be the writing. So the main character is a "blitzball" player with throngs of fans, there's a bit of an apocalypse with unclear motivations, his friend sorta saves him, and they're transported to a new place? It was a whole lot of eyerolls.
