You can choose to chill in an area in XIII, view all the sights from every single angle, beat every optional battle and get every single chest. I'm still arguing that it's linear, but I don't see how you can argue that being able to backtrack through areas or go through past areas to kill monsters creates game choice.

To be honest, VIII made me revisit many areas. I enjoyed it because in the context of the story, it made sense to use areas you had connected with (those who've played it will understand what I mean). But someone could just as easily counter-argue that VIII showed a lack of inspiration and general laziness in not creating new areas.

And you cannot argue that the fact that XIII has no distractions (in the form of side-quests etc) is a flaw. A game that actually requires these side-quests (as in, the main gameplay has become dull) would be considered flawed. Side-quests are merely there to augment the game, not make the game worth playing.

So by becoming linear, it only removed many of the augmenting features that we associate with a Final Fantasy. But Final Fantasy VIII is not about the Shumi tribe or Triple Triad, and VII is not about chocobo breeding and snowboard racing, and IX is not about their inferior version of Triple Triad, and X is not about Blitzball and XII is not about mark hunting (or fishing - most pointless side-quest ever). So, XIII decided to purify the core experience by removing anything that could distract the player from the main storyline. That is a design choice, not a flaw.

It only becomes flawed when the main experience can no longer carry the game (which some people feel it hasn't).

But the main issue I have here is people mentioning this and that Final Fantasy and saying how non-linear it is relative to FFXIII when it is clearly not. Lack of linearity implies choice, and choice only has meaning when it influences something else. Whether I choose to go left or right has no influence on the world. Whether I choose to breed chocobos or not has no influence on the world. VII is the last FF which I think had any meaningful choice, and that had to do with the dating game. Since then, nothing you chose to do has influenced the world at all.