You know, for a game that's super linear at the beginning (and for 3/4 of the content in the game), I actually came to enjoy this a lot more than I expected based on the popular reputation. I grew to really like the linearity. It gave the game a very carefully guided balance curve, and while it took so so long to fully unlock all the options, once it got there, there was an enjoyable combat system to slot into the linear, yet tightly controlled, experience.
The game really fell apart for me in Chapter 11, or when you enter the open world section. Yes, I feel directly opposite of the popular consensus. The open world section is terrible, and completely destroys any sense of momentum, combat progression, or combat balance. I spent about 3 hours in the Gran Pulse plains before hacking my save file to give myself maximum CP. I was told to expect a fairly steep combat requirement in the final act, which is why I did that, and boy am I glad I did. Because even after hacking my save and making a bee-line for the next quest marker, it still took me 5 hours to get out of this open world zone. It contains some of the worst feeling encounters in the game because the last 20 hours have given you this linear experience, but now you have to do side quests and backtrack for asinine puzzles in order to progress.
Once I was out of there, it was another quick 7 hours to finish the game, and the ending was fine. Not much to see.
Overall, I think this game is very interesting and ambitious. I respect the forwardness to make a deeply linear game with a linear story, but not so much the open world design they tried to go with. An interesting failure, I'd say.
The game really fell apart for me in Chapter 11, or when you enter the open world section. Yes, I feel directly opposite of the popular consensus. The open world section is terrible, and completely destroys any sense of momentum, combat progression, or combat balance. I spent about 3 hours in the Gran Pulse plains before hacking my save file to give myself maximum CP. I was told to expect a fairly steep combat requirement in the final act, which is why I did that, and boy am I glad I did. Because even after hacking my save and making a bee-line for the next quest marker, it still took me 5 hours to get out of this open world zone. It contains some of the worst feeling encounters in the game because the last 20 hours have given you this linear experience, but now you have to do side quests and backtrack for asinine puzzles in order to progress.
Once I was out of there, it was another quick 7 hours to finish the game, and the ending was fine. Not much to see.
Overall, I think this game is very interesting and ambitious. I respect the forwardness to make a deeply linear game with a linear story, but not so much the open world design they tried to go with. An interesting failure, I'd say.