Am I missing something or is the combat in XIII really weird?

Went over to a friend's house recently and he had FF16 on it, it made me really want to dive into the FF series and I decided to start with FF13 since I found lightning to be really beautiful. However I'm quite confused about the gameplay because it feels like such a chore.

I would've been fine with it if it was just a normal turn based game but it's not, it's a weird middle ground between a turn based and a standard hack and slash, you can't exactly strategize and there's no dopamine rush you get from dominating ur enemies. So I'm quite confused, I really want to enjoy the game but I can't. Is it just not for me?