I agree with Flying Arrow, and would like to throw in that Gran Pulse was a pretty bad way to compensate for everything they did up to that point. It makes it even worse because it's so obvious what they were doing. In fact, I thought the game fell off a little after Gran Pulse, because although everything was linear, it was focused, and it didn't arbitrarily fall back on mark hunts as a way of saying 'i'm sorry.' That was just like a slap in the face, not to mention the character interaction and development drops off at about that time, too.

Still an awesome game, though!