I don't think people are more or less angry about the linearity of the game, as Final Fantasy X was and that game is amazing, but rather there's no break point towns in the games. The only towns are straight lines and you can't even talk to people. Final Fantasy X had towns that you could run around and gather information about the state of the world. Or maybe even do mini side quests if there was any. Hell you could backtrack in Final Fantasy X even without the airship. In Final Fantasy XIII you can't backtrack to anywhere on Cocoon apparently (Gotta ask my boi Perpride on that) and the "exploration" is in a very small section of the game in Pulse. And even then I question what kind of "exploration" they speak of. Plus they spent all this time on the game with over 300 people, and what we're left with is half a Final Fantasy game. I think that's the real complaints; it's half a Final Fantasy game. Doesn't help Kitase keeps on going on and on about how doing HD towns is too hard, yet I seem to recall this not being a problem when they were making these said "towns" on super computers back on the PSX days, hell they were more detailed back then too.