Oh yeah, the linearity... personally, I don't mind linear games at all, but if you do, well you'll probably get pretty bored with FFXIII. Though I think 40 hours is a little exaggerated, I don't think it took me that long to get to the open area (though it does take quite a while). I could be wrong though.

Very bad, but that's only natural, it's a Final Fantasy game.

Well, it is just the "everything sucks" kind of attiude nothing more

And yes I'm very active in XV thread because I'm really interested and I been following the project since a long time. As you can see in my post above, I said XIII story has downsides. And I have criticized XII many times. I have zero problem criticizing FF, so...

Anyways, I apologized in advance.

The story is alright. None of the characters are really that well written that it makes you keep going to see how they fare. Lighting is a cunt half of the game, Snow is a little too "naruto" for most people, Vanille is annoying, Fang is forgettable and hope is annoying AS SHIT. My man sazh though, he is a pretty well rounded character.

As far as actual story, It's interesting enough but again, not memorable. I didn't really feel for the characters and their cause.

The first time I played it, the story was a little hard to follow, but mostly because of all the unusual names for everything. The second time, it all flowed and made perfect sense.

On the other hand, I think all of Kingdom Heart's story is bunch of garbage, and some people eat it up, so to each their own.

The story is terrible as are most of the characters. Hope and Vanille are two of the worst characters in JRPG history. The lore behind FFXIII is actually pretty good. That makes the weak story that much more inexcusable.

There's nothing wrong with being linear.

There isn't, all FFs are linear to an extent but FF13 really takes the cake. To me, it was so linear to the point where I feel like I literally was going down hallways and there was no feeling of a world to explore. Even FFX, despite its linearity still made me feel like I was exploring a huge world, that's not the case with FFXIII imo.

Great story overall, but gotta love scifi namings overload.

Some characters might be annoying, depending on your tastes, but it's pretty realistic IMO as every 15 yo are annoying bitches.

You tell em.  Here's how you help OP: Final Fantasy XIII is a video game created by Square Enix for the Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360.  You play the game with a controler and press buttons.  There are characters in Final Fantasy XIII and they have names.  

I'll stop here so I don't give to much away but there you have it, completely unbiased and objective review.