Here's the thing. It's not that it is linear. It's that it's extremely linear. It's so bad that the Japanese are compaining about it. THEM. The ones who loved FF10 despite the fact it too was very linear.

• There are no towns in the traditional sense
• You can't avoid any fight
• You rarely get a choice of who to use
• There are no alternate paths

This is the first few hours of the game

So its not linear in the same way as FFX was ? I usually think Linear helps certain kinds of plot driven games. An open world can sometimes diminish the possibilities of nice plot twist.

I just looked at your link Smash xD
Lol its almost like a straight line, only 4 parts really change the straight line xD
And can`t you flee or dodge the incoming enemies? (haven`t watched gameplay footage xD)

And are the towns that different ? did they change the simple town with a inn, item , weapon/armour shop thingy or?

You haven't seen any gameplay footage yet? You should watch some gameplay to see what people are talking about, this game has a lot of exploration you can do later in the game, Gran Pulse is pretty big. But, yes the beginning is very linear.

I ruined alot of gaming pleasures thx to spoilers xD, i`ve been really carefull with FF XIII and Kh: bbs. I only watched trailers and standard battles, like ''behemoth'' boss battle, you just know that its not an important battle. But I haven`t seen that much yet, no towns or explorations.

hmm... well I've played for ~20h now and it really was all very linear with 1-way dungeons up until now

I played it for 6 hours and I pretty much walked a straight line... That's just TOO linear.

Even if it opens up at the half way mark, if the first 15 hours suck then I'll probably not care for the rest.

Every Final Fantasy game has been linear up to some point when the world opens up and you're free to explore and do things in which ever order you like (specially sidequests).

However, according to RPGfan (which I trust the most in matters of RPGs over the blockheads from IGN et al) this Final Fantasy has little to do besides dungeon crawling and following the story as you move along different areas. It sounds a lot like FFX to me (without those stupid temple puzzles). You can't even adjust the camera like in FFXII (big letdown for me), but I enjoyed X so I'm sure the Crystarium system, the awesome fights, amazing vistas and story (CGI and cut-scenes included) will encourage more than one playthrough for me.

FFX was very linear and it was my favorite FF. FFXII was open world and I hated it. Pretty sure I will like FFXIII then. Not every game has to be sandbox