[Stu]

Sold it this morning. I'm sorry, but to say it's no more linear than FFX, whatever your opinion on it, is just crazy. Every Square fanboy has been saying this, in addition to such oddities as 'all those sidequests we have been playing for years were pointless, anyway!' in an attempt to defend the game from people who - *gasp* - don't like it.

X's map was linear, yes, but it had a purpose. It was exciting, faced past, and had the old style battle system. You didn't spend five hours per area running a bit, running into an enemy, running a bit more, and running into a cinematic. Rinse, wash and repeat.

Also the sphere grid was far superior and freeform to Chrystalis, which is not actually a character advancement system in the slightest. Merely the illusion of one. Think about it.

Who knows, Final Fantasy XIII might have gotten better, but I doubt it. After ten hours of playing X I knew who the main badasses were, why they were, who the good guys were, what kind of world we were living in - every detail really that you should know after playing ten hours of any game.

It's definately some peoples thing, sure, but advancing a story by walking in a straight direction for sixty hours isn't my idea of a game. It's absoloutely astounding that the development team spent years working on this game without once questioning the fact that they were going to piss a lot of people off. It's just lazy all around. They had an amazing game engine that cost a bundle to develop for so they concentrated on a nice, linear story. To hell with everything else.

To hell with Square too.

All hail Bioware and Bethesda.