Best FF game

And yet every other game has managed to give you the illusion of freedom by giving you a world map to do with optional side quests and things to scope out on it. 

Final Fantasy X offered you a world map... in the final section of the game.  A world map where you clicked and chose what location you wanted to go to.  Certainly a long way removed from that feeling of awe when you first step outside of Midgar, that's for sure.

When Final Fantasy started going downhill.

A slight step down from FFIX, but still a great game. It was the start of a lot of the things the series is criticized for now though, like a more linear progression, no world map, less focus on ATB.

Tidus is a whiney little shit
Seymour is the most obvious and pointless villain ever.
Auron was a badass
Yuna, Lulu, and Rikku were awesome
The combat was fantastic
The technology is completely contrived

8/10

I don't know why people say that linearity is a bad thing.

Some of the best games I've played from each genre were linear: Final Fantasy X, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, The Walking Dead, etc.

Open worlds don't always compliment games. It does befit some of them but it's not decisive of whether it's good or not.

If you don't like linearity then that's fine but keep in mind that you are the problem, not the game.

Second favorite FF title(after FFVII)
-Great Story and Mythos. Maybe the most cohesive in the series.
-Best Traditional Turn Based Combat ....... period
-Original Roster of strong Characters, Strongest being Tidus,Auron, Yuna. Weakest being Kimhari and Rikku but they are no Vanille/Hope/ Snow or Irvine/Selphie for sure. Yuna is maybe my favorite Female lead in the series, Terra and Lightning aint got shit on her.
-invented the leveling system that replaced the traditional "Level Up" that you now see in every JRPG, Sphere Grid. XII, XIII and Tales have blatantly ripped it off.
-Best Side Quest in the series, Blitzball (the only sports game I will ever play).
-tolerable linearity due to superb pacing(IMO) and enough detours to make it still feel open.

and DMC1 and 3, GoW1-2, Kingdom Hearts1-2, Xenosaga, Star Ocean III: Till the End of Time, Tekken 4, FFXI(I played it on PS2), and let us not forget............................................................. Persona 3 and Persona 4(Greatest JRPG eva!).

I 90% agree with this statement.

All of those games you listed, aside from Final Fantasy X, are from series which have always been linear, so there was no expectation otherwise.  Previous Final Fantasies at least offered some semblance of freedom at various points throughout the game and weren't walk from point A to B indefinitely.

"Linear" and "Open world" are two extremes, too.  There's a happy medium somewhere in between that the other games used to get right and was completely lost with X.  Even XIII-2 was structured completely linearly but they rather sensibly decided to branch out options from there to give you some form of choice.