You're just fooling yourself really.

- FFX towns are there just for the hell of it. It might as well not have it

- Backtracking? BARELY.

- It was SLIGHTLY less hallway-esque than XIII, but there weren't really "branching paths"

- Oh, underwater levels. Because everybody loves those! And besides, I can only remember of one section, with Tidus, Wakka and RIkku

- Collect pointless magazines. THat's what's missing from XIII

- The worst mini-games to ever disgrace a game, yes.

- I would'n call it "secret areas", but fine

- It was more customizable, yes. I'll give you that.

- Interesting NPCs? IN FINAL FANTASY X? You gotta be kidding me.

- Story and characters are subjective, I won't discuss that.

Overall, yes, people who hate on XIII for "linearity" and love X are kinda hypocrites. If you hate the game for different reasons though, be by guest.

FFX has Blitzball.

I do always wonder if I played a different game from other people. I understood the story and the characters that everyone criticizes the most had far more depth than most video game characters.

I can't believe the amount of people mentioning the lightning plains, chocobo racing and blitzball.

I'm serious, I love FFX. But those are the stuff of nightmare.

Didn't say my reason for liking FFX better is lack of linearity.

Although FFX is still muuuuuuuuch less linear. You can at least spend time doing a lot stuff, in any order, other than progress the story. FFXIII only has that for 20% of the game and only for hunts.

I'm gonna paraphrase you and say you're just fooling yourself.

Besides all the subjective stuff, and a town thrown in here and there, FFX released before.

That's a massive difference. Not only it had the benefit of excusing itself on inferior hardware and different standards of gameplay, the very fact it released before vindicates it. The first time you commit an error is excusable, the second less so.

Just imagine a random game trilogy out there. Let's say the first game X was lauded by the public but had a certain flaw, who wasn't however present on its sequel Y. Now imagine Y's sequel, Z, brings the very same flaw back. That's quite frustrating. Z will obviously be hated more than X. It's all a matter of expectations.

That's what I think at least. Though FFXIII was bashed way beyond its flaws, yeah, and that's unfair, but that's also how it is.

How do you know that most people who have played Final Fantasy 13 hate the game?
On the Internet? Sure, it has become a cool thing to do to bash it. That was not the case when the game was released, the internet warriors developed this attitude a few months after release and it became common. Edit: SE terrible reputation didn't help either, they made some of the worst decision in the recent years. People were hating on SE through XIII.

It is a good game with its share of flaws.

Every FF has its legion of hypocrites or hipsters that like to critizise something that is considering "popular". I hate that kind of thinking. FF X was a wonderful game back then, and is still one of the most popular games in the saga. It's just another victim like FF VII, FF VIII and FF XII, that were bashed by a vocal minority that not represent the reality.

In my opinion, there is no bad mainline FF games, just ones that make something better than others. "Final Fantasy is dead" is something I've hearing since FF VIII, and every mainline game since then has been maginificent in its own way.

FF tries to change the formula with every game, and some people, nostalgic and conservative people, maybe don't like changes, but this mentality is what I like the most from FF. Every new FF have something old, and something new that makes every game fresh.

For me, FFXIII graphics, setting, soundtrack, battle system and mythology were top notch in FF history. I liked the progression of the characters trough the story. Probably most people hate them because it seems, people don't finish games nowadays, and probably they just played the first few hours of the game.

I can agree with the fact that FF XIII lacks better customization and sidequests or extra content. Grand pulse could have been even more richer in content.

But I enjoyed the game a lot. It's the most spectacular FF to date, with a gorgeous soundtrack and an intense system battle versus the hardest enemies in the game. The only thing I can say I really enjoyed more in FF X was the story. To me, FF X have the best ending of any FF.

I've learned long time ago, to not listen to opinions of very popular games on the internet, because you will always find detractors. Even some people is bashing games like The Last of Us!!!....and nobody will convince me that this game is bad. The same I feel about every mailine FF.

This.

There's truely nothing to add.

Alson the side-missions were amazing. 

FFX is more linear than I remembered but it's definitely not as bad as FFXIII. Also, linearity was but one of many issues I had with FFXIII.