I'm at the end of chapter 11 for Final Fantasy XIII, and I have to say I am very underwhelmed overall. I thought XII and III DS sucked, but X was one of the best games I have ever played. It's at least my favorite game for the PS2. XIII, so far, is a pretty good game, but I was obviously hoping for more than that.

I know talking about XV is a bit premature, given that XIV hasn't even come out yet, but come on, XIV is an MMORPG. I have no expectations for it whatsoever, as I will not be playing it.

I never had a problem with linearity. Like in Uncharted 2, I was completely fine with it. The difference is that the environments still felt pretty open. Just some little corridor makes the experience feel less involving and cramped.

Add more variety in. The side-quests just have you fighting monsters in XIII, like you were doing before! There's absolutely nothing else to them. I'm not going to stick around after the game to want to play them.

No melo-dramatic crap. The other ones had this, too. I understand that if I were in the same situation as some of these characters, I'd be a bit sad, too, but some of these people are over-the-top ridiculous. Work on the dialogue and have a story that doesn't involve someone not existing.

Also, hard should not equal excessive hours of grinding. Final Fantasy III DS was a "hard" game because all the bosses were ridiculously over-powered. That just made me fight the boring as hell battles some more. The entire game was horrible to begin with, given that you did nothing more than press the "Attack" button and watch some crappy animation, but I was forced to do more of it so I wouldn't get my ass repeatedly owned. And if I did, I lose an hour or two worth of time because the save-points are all outside the dungeon!

No easy battles either. In every JRPG, there are a lot of instances where I don't even have to switch my Paradigms because the fight is so insanely easy. Why is that fun? The attack animations wear thin when you realize you've been watching them the entire game.

I'll complain some more later. But XV better sweep up the crap XIII left behind. They spent a damn longer time making a game that doesn't seem to have much imagination to it.