^ I appreciate linearity to an extent, I love FFVIII, IX and X, but XIII just failed to grab me in the same manner, I seem to care very little for the characters and turns of events, the thing about the original games is that there was always this sense of open-ness from the very start.
8 let you explore the entirety of Balmb island from the get go, which was nice, IX had some nice sprawley environments which were pretty to look at, and after the first chapter or so, you could ditch the main story line for a bit just to look around, do a few side quests and level up.
X, whilst having a similar sense of linearity that XIII has, still managed to keep me utterly enthralled with the plot line, just because so many intensely epic things happened, like the Sin attacks, but XIII as it stands just throws up the same boring combat against the same boring enemies and in my defence, I've given it 12 full hours of game time, that's more than I give most normal games.
It's underwhelming is all I'm saying, that's my personal opinion, I don't feel rewarded for having waited several years for this game.