I've been avoiding this forum in case I saw spoilers in any titles, but I'm getting less and less convinced that the story is interesting enough to actually *have* spoilers (note: I don't want to know any if it does)

I'd guess I'm about half way through the game? Just came out of "The Woods". It's the first time I've heard any decent background about any of the characters and the nearest it's come to even remotely emotional, and it seems like I've been playing forever.

Is it this dull all the way through? Where's the epic storyline, the deep and troubled pasts of the characters, the twists, the extra twists and counter twists, the excitement, the emotion, the feeling of immersion, the feeling of wanting to stay up all night with bleary eyes as you get completely hooked on the story and can't wait to see what happens next? The things that defined Final Fantasy. This is an FF by name, it's got moogles and chocobos, but to me it's just "not FF".

For the first time I'm in the middle of a new FF and I'm not excited. The gameplay is kind of fun, if you like the whole online-feel to the new battle system, but otherwise it's boring (and with the high level fantasy language, bloody hard work to follow. I keep having to re-read the Game Script at gamefaqs just to figure out what's going on.) Even FF8 was more interesting than this. I keep wanting to play VII or X to remind myself that yes, they used to be very very good.

Please tell me it's just really slow to get going?