But it's also a problem if people have such expectations from every new Final Fantasy game. I quickly learned that there's no common feature between the games in the series and so it would be wrong of me to expect the next game to have this or that or to be one way or the other. Every new Final Fantasy is different from its predecessor and it always gets some heat for it. But it shouldn't really if you condition your expectations.

And to me FFX never felt that linear. I remember playing Blitzball every now and then going back to previous locations to find sidequest items or hidden summons.

It is my all time favorite Final Fantasy. Loved everything about it. People complain about the voice acting but it was never a problem to me. Though I'm younger than probably a majority of people here & was exposed to this one first so its my favorite closely followed by DS/PSP remake of FF3 (another controversial FF). I really dont have anything bad to say about it other than you cant skip cutscenes (which is a problem if you have a long cutscene prior to fighting a hard boss that you lose at)

10 is the only one if played all the way through. A few things I'd change but I liked it.

if ffxiii would have been pulse only people would have loved it and compared it to ffx. but because of the cocoon part a lot of people hate it. to me ffxiii is over all better than ffx allthough i didn't like a lot of the cocoon chapters as well.

What?? FFX has great characters and an amazing story. It's my favorite FF game...

But to put it into perspective, it's actually the only FF game I have completed. However, that's actually quite an achievement because I started many of the other ones and got bored.

aaaahhhahahaahahahano

Just no. 

FFX was linear, yes, but it had side content, exploration, minigames, secrets, and blitzball.  FFXIII might have well have been on rails for all the freedom it gave you.  While yes, Gran Pulse had a bit of exploration, it was still basically a flower, 90% of it linear, one spot that kinda branches out,t hen back to the stamen which is linear. 

And people hated XIII for reasons other than its linearity.  they hated the flat, two dimensional characters, they hated the poorly told story and how 90% of the plot had to be read from an encyclopedia, the conceptually flawed battle system, the boring character and item customization, etc.  Strict linearity was NOT the only reason people hated XIII. 

X, on the other hand, gets hated for a few different reasons, such as the lack of a world map, terrible voice acting, and annoying characters.  All valid reasons to criticise, but not nearly as bad as 'broken gameplay' or poorly told story".  Take Wakka for example, one of the most hated characters in all of gaming actually had one of the deepest and most nuanced character arcs ever.  People hated Squall for the same reasons, started out closeminded, annoying, and generally unlikeable, only to basically turn everything around as the plot progressed.  Squall was SUPPOSED to be hated at first.  Wakka and Tidus were SUPPOSED To be hated.  IT's called character development.

Yeah, absolutely nothing like the Calm Lands at all.

My favorite Final Fantasy.

Finally, SOMEONE gets it.

Best game ever. I don't know why people said that ff went downhill after X. I love ff XII but the characters weren't as good as other characters form the franchise ( With the exception of Fran and Balthier)