Yeah wide open RPG's are great, but not a single one has such great character development or story. Most of those also has repetitive systems, now FF can easily be repetitive when it comes to combat but FFXIII hasn't tired me a bit after so many hours of intense combat. All enemies can't be killed the same, and no I don't mean like FFX where you just changed trough characters to the one which the enemy was weak against but instead the classes and class combinations that is of importance. I usually use "Relentless Assault", "War Clinic", "Ruthless" and "Protection" , but pretty often do I have to change to paradigms like Solidarity, Bully, Entourage and sometimes I just change to Cerberus because it's awesome when enemies are staggered at 999.99%.
But it ain't that narrow when you come to Chapter 11, the place is HUUUUGGGEEE and of course it's gorgeus (did I spell it right?).
I haven't played so much, just been going around not doing anything at the moment.