Fail Fantasy XIII, why God why?

I usually support Square Enix even when they don't exactly make the best decisions, but recently I've had some trouble. A series like Final Fantasy is something that needs to be given respect, unfortunately Square Enix don't seem to be able to do it. Final Fantasy XII was a good game, even if it was a departure from Final Fantasy traditions. It had more side quests than any FF game to date, and fair enough they were all "Go here, kill x# of these things/deliver my package/break up my sons gay wedding" but they disguised the level grinding thats inevitable with any JRPG as something worthwhile. Now I can grind, BOY can I grind, on FF VIII I never had less than ninety of any given type of magic, I ground the hell out of that world to the point where the final boss (famously one of the hardest) was a walk in the park. I like the grinding, I like spending ten minutes navigating a world map to get somewhere, I like the illusion that it's a real world with real places. Even XII had the astness of its locations in its favour. We wont talk about FFX, every series has a slight slump and X wasn't really bad, just ever so slightly linear for ever so slightly to long but even so, you got an airship and got some side quests, they were THERE. Anyway here's my outline for a Final Fantasy as it should be. Introduce characters, make it blatantly obvious who's going to end up shacking up with who at the end of the game, fight something, main character + love interest meet in interesting circumstances. Go for a walk, arrive at another town. Plot. Go for a walk, arrive at another town. Plot. Add some sort of transportations, become exploration game. Travel. Plot. Sidequests. Plot. Fight big guy. TWIST. Plot. Kill big bad guy. Love. Kiss. PLOT. CREDITS. Right, it's not hard. Final Fantasy XIII goes a bit like this. Walk. Walk. Walk. Walk. Walk. Walk. Walk. Walk. Walk. Walk. EXPLORE HUGE AREA. Walk. Walk. Fight. Credits. Seriously, NO side Quests, NO backtracking, NO, world map. Did you ever play Lord Of The Rings on PS2? You know the official game of that movie series that did ok a few years ago. It was everything we expected from a movie game. All flash and no bang. It was just a case of walk, slash, walk, slash. It was awful but we expected that. It took about two weeks to develop and sold thousands of copies to people so starstruck by the film they'd buy pretty much any merchandise that bore the logo. Ok I bought it.... anyway. Moving on, this is what we expect from film tie ins, NOT multi million selling, decade spanning series like Final Fantasy. I don't want to say it's bad, I'd be betraying everything I believe about Square Enix, they make good games. It's just, it feels more like a spin off that a numbered game, it feels unfinished and badly thought out. Linearity isn't a bad thing in games, unless they're RPG's, and I can't call Final Fantasy XIII an RPG, I can call it an action adventure with RPG elemnts, much like Dirge of Cerberus was or I can call it a turn based beat em up, but I can't hand on heart call it an RPG. I'm not saying don't buy it, if we keep Square Enix in business they might follow the promising trend in todays game scene and go back to the roots of the series. what I am saying is if you're looking for an RPG for a next gen console that feels like an oldschool RPG there are many better alternatives. Tales Of Vesperia, The Last Remnant and Infinite Undiscovery all deliver in droves what Final Fantasy XIII fails to provide. Joking aside, I am bitterly dissapointed and saddened. I've looked forward to XIII for years and to have my hopes dashed is a bitter pill to swallow. To put it in perspective I had two teeth pulled last week, and to transform FF XIII into the game it SHOULD have been, I'd let the bloodthristy South African yank two more. What? My dentist is from South Africa, he's a good guy, that's beside the point. I do have one thing to say thats positive, I'm playing to PS3 version, and for the most part the framerate doesn't fall over and cry. It's a small thing but it counts for a lot. To conclude this post I just want to say that I'm not going to abandon Square Enix, just let them be for a while.