My ex housemates in Japan have the game and told me what they thought of it.
One of them loved it and had next to no previous experience of the series beyond number 7. One of them who is a bigtime series fan said she hated it for basically the same reasons a lot of you have mentioned, but mainly because the world feels very empty with not much to do in comparison to older versions. You don't feel the sense to explore etc.. And the last one who has played all of the games for all of the formats says he loves it and has not stopped playing it since he got it. He says it is not as good as some of the others but is a lot better then a lot of them too.
So to me it seems 2 out of 3 liking it is pretty good going. Sure people will have bits they dislike or wish could be better. Every game has that. But overall it should be fun to fans of the series, maybe not the best in the series but by going on what people are saying it is far from the worst. And that = instant buy from me.
