Type-0 has nothing to do with XIII, so there's no reason to play it to get the "full experience" of XIII.
Similar to how nobody has to play Dirge of Cerberus to get the full experience of VII, nobody has to play Lightning Returns to get the full experience of XIII. Each entry is its own stand-alone story. That's like saying you can't have the full experience of Assassin's Creed I if you don't also play every PSP and iOS release. Or that you don't get the full experience of Chrono Trigger if you haven't played Radical Dreamers. Or that you don't get the full experience of Fast and the Furious if you don't also watch Furious 7.
One of the reasons I generally dislike Cracked articles that focus on games in any way other than 'X really cool and ridiculous things that happened in some big online game' is how often the humor requires the writer to intentionally treat their audience like buffoons. In this case, the author tries to make a point by boiling earlier Final Fantasy games down to their base, underlying trope and then intentionally over-explains XIII's plot as though it's any more convoluted than the others. For example:
VIII is a game where a teenager wakes up in a hospital with a face cut from a sword that shoots bullets and takes an exam with a teacher who crushes on him. Then he takes another exam while working with the man who cut his face and another guy who's really into hotdogs. They ride a ship to a radio tower to fight an invading army and discover the radio tower is working and fight two people whose names are a reference to Star Wars characters, and the entire trip is graded which affects the pay scale of the main teenager and his friends once they become SeeDs for the Garden which was set up by a man and his wife who is a sorceress with powers from a future sorceress who wants to use her as a conduit to compress time and also the main character's dad visits him in dreams but actually reverse because the son is playing the dad in the dreams who starts working for an army and finds a giant pillar that summons monsters from the moon but then lives in a village before becoming president of a secret city and helping a woman who sends people through time.
XIII is just a game about overthrowing a corrupt government.
I'll never understand why people have such hatred for XIII. Every complaint I've ever heard about it can be leveled at every other Final Fantasy game. But somehow, it became popular to hate the game and anything that came after. And you're "no TRUE Final Fantasy fan" if you like it more than VI or VII or IV. The same gatekeeping on what is a true Final Fantasy game and fan has occurred since the second game in the entire series came out. That's like 30 years of people complaining that the newest entry isn't a true Final Fantasy game, when literally the only constants in the entire series are certain names, monsters, and animals.
I'm not sure Final Fantasy is experiencing a net loss of fans at all. XIII and XIII-2 outsold any previous entries in the series, individually. Lightning Returns wasn't as hot of a seller but that's hardly indicative of fan loss any more than IX. IX undersold VII, VIII, and X. Yet IX will often be held up by fans as the "last GREAT Final Fantasy". Of course, that also happens with VI, IV, V, VIII, VII, and X.
Basically, the article comes off as one person who's just really mad about XIII, ports, skimpy outfits, and mobile games.
Which, sure, whatever, you can be mad at whatever you want. But at least be coherent in your madness.