I am actually quite enjoying it. The first couple of hours as you say were a bit of a grind, seemed a bit pointless, the whole area made little sense etc.. the thing i could not get was why they had 2 things with very similar name i.e the L'ic etc.. that was major confusing.
But beyond that first zone the game starts to get good and is nowhere near as bad as the reviews have been making out in my opinion. There are annoyances (like the grunting noises every 5secs) but this is a FF game, i don't see anything different in it.
So thus far really enjoying it.








