I have been on a kind of a hiatus from the final fantasy series. I went from being a hardcore fan to despising the series (since FFX).
I was intending on giving FF XIII a miss but decided to pick it up on the off chance. I had already been put off after reading reviews on its linearity and lack of towns/outposts.
The linearity of this game would really bug me if the story was not compelling enough to make you want to constantly progress. I say this because so far the game usually consists of walking down path after path, with no real scenery in most cases and nothing to explore. The items you can find now are barely hidden so anyone can find them, and all appear as a giant bouncy sphere (they even emit an obvious noise).
It is obvious they were going for a bigger audience with this game at the expense of hardcore fans. Nearly everything has been dumbed down. There are save points ever 10 metres and you can pretty much get through the first 4 hours of the game by bashing X every time you get into a fight. Shops are now attached to save points, of which are somewhat redundant because I tend to find every item before its in the shops stock.
All this simplicity is not entirely negative though because the battle overhaul is somewhat welcome, if only a one off instance. You now only control one character with AI controlling the others. This seems like a stupid decision at first but when you realise how streamlined and fast paced it makes the battles, its hard to dislike it. You give each party member a class which alters their skills and tactics. This makes preparation outside of battles just as important as the decisions you make during them. You can switch between classes you have defined whilst in a fight and the characters immediately adopt them.
The best thing about battles now however is that they are no longer random. You can see the enemies on the screen and run around and past them if you want to. This takes that tediousness out of trying to get somewhere and being struck by pointless battles out of the equation, and is a very welcome addition.
Well that is pretty much all I have to say about it at the moment. I have got the stage where battles are starting to get challenging and the story has remained strong. Despite its simplicity I am still enjoying the game, its just a good job the graphics and story are good enough to see you through the more dull game play moments.
I guess as it stands at the moment I would compare this to the Morrowind/Oblivion scenario, where the latter game has been dumbed down but still remains enjoyable.
Posted by Shane's Shed 
Kenjara 