Maybe I'm slow or not so good at predicting things, but FFX had just as many surprises for me as any other FF. Some things like [bigspoiler]the fact that Maechen lived in Zanarkand and is a 1000 year old unsent[/bigspoiler] you don't even find out until the end of FFX-2, and even then it's generally only if you're shooting for 100% completion that you do what's required to find out...

Yes the first one was annoyingly linear. I'll grant that. X-2 fixed that good and proper, showing that Squenix still have what it takes

Edit: why doesn't [spoiler] work? I had to use 'bigspoiler'