I wonder how much of the negative reaction towards FF13 can be put down to hype backlash? The game was massively hyped before it came out, and we all know that in these situations a lot of video game "fans" on the internet decide that they hate the game and that it's overrated before they even play it.
That said, I have seen some quite worrying things that can't be put down to this. The maps of the first few parts of the game are just ridiculous; it's true that a lot of FF game are linear at the beginning in the sense that one has to follow a specific path, but rarely is that path an almost perfectly straight line. That is linearity on a completely different scale and can't be compared. Hopefully it opens up later in the game, but we'll still be faced with the prospect of damaged thumbs from holding the left analogue stick in one direction and not moving it for a long period of time when playing through the first few chapters.
