I'd say Chapter 3 too. This is when you get the paradigm system and access to the crystarium (sphere grid basically).

Around Chapter 3/4 stuff starts to get interesting--I'm currently on Chapter 6..  You get to "level-up" your characters even though it's not called that.  The difficulty starts getting much tougher--you actually have to employ some strategy as the game goes on.   You start to get summons, etc.  The game does stay linear, but it starts to improve greatly.

Honestly, screw the reviews.  I'm loving it even though it's "different" than what a lot of us expect from FF.

I've played a few hours and am still waiting. The cinematics and story telling is good so far. But game wise it hasn't been the best.

So far, I loved Lost Odyssey a lot more.

Haha, I'm no FF noob, I've played and completed III, VI, VII and VIII, all of which maybe weren't too challenging during the first few hours, but they were a lot more interactive than this one.

I've just reached the crystal lake place, and things are looking a wee bit better now, I can start leveling up my characters, and it's so purty my eyes might explode!!  :)

Not 15 hours at all- the first few hours are kind of boring, but it gets better as you play along (especially the parts with Sahz and Vanille get very good.)

Yea, I agree, it's beautiful, but it's lacking soul. As good as the backgrounds and graphics are, they're kind of boring for the most part, but they also get better and have some Final Fantasy magic too it later on.

And yes, the game actually gets difficult, which is awesome.