After to finishing it I think an 8/10 is a fair score, it some great moments but theres a lot of things that frustrated me. I had fairly low expectations after XII so I'm not that dissapointed, but there are a number of things that really hold the game back.
As for story and characters, both were an improvement on XII (except Balthier!) but the plot was confusing in places and some of the characters irritated me. Lightning was a good character and I actually wish she had been featured more, theres a lot of time you spend controlling other characters but I found her to be the most fun to play as and the most interesting personality wise. I liked Snow also, hes quite a cliché but his voice actor was good (as it was across the board really) and he has some cool moments during the game. Hope is very annoying for about 3/4 of the game but by the end his character has grown and I could put up with him. Sazh was ok, but Fang and Vanille I wasn't a fan of and didn't really feel anything towards them during the ending. The ending was also somewhat confusing.
Monster designs were ok, I prefered the Pulse monsters as they were more traditional. I'm not a big fan of turning the summons into Transformers, but it does work nicely for a couple of cutscenes late in the game which I guess was the intention.
The battle system had the potential to be great but I think it takes too much control away from the player, its similar to XII in that the game plays itself. You have two AI characters you can't control and all you need do for your character is select Auto-Battle/Heal at the appropriate moment, then switch their jobs if your health is low and thats about it. I prefer the more traditional approach where you control all your characters, I think job switching was done best in X-2 and the general battle system of X is still the best.
I liked the music, I wouldn't mind listening to the soundtrack again as there were a couple of tracks that I really liked and got stuck in my head (one I think is called 'Desperate Struggle' which I really liked). Graphics don't really mean much to me in any game but it does look nice I guess, the character models are impressive and the environments are very well done, the CG cutscenes are nicely rendered too. Overall the presentation through-out the game is all expertly done.
I think everyone already knows what most consider the biggest problem with the game and I agree, it is far to linear. It must be the most linear Final Fantasy to date, I heard things open-up by a certain point but thats only if you enjoy the XII style Mark Hunts, if like me and you don't then the game never opens up at all and its just a collection of linear dungeons. No towns to visit, no real shops or inns, no NPCs to talk too, puzzles to solve, no airship, hardly any minigames or fun little diversions. You don't even get to select your battle party until very late in the game, you're forced for a long time to play through linear dungeons with pre-selected 2 person teams and it feels like a chore. The leveling-up system also feels like a poor-man's sphere grid.
Some may compare it to X and say that was also linear, but it did have towns for you to visit and you travelled between them and could go back and revist all the locations at the end of the game, it had various minigames and temples with puzzles in each town, and just felt a lot more complete than XIII. One example where the linearity really bugged me was the Nautilus level, my initial reaction was cool a next-gen Gold Saucer, and the characters even say they will take a break from things and have fun, but nope, theres nothing whatsoever to do and it becomes just another linear dungeon to battle through. That was a big oppourtunity missed, like most of the locations.
I'm sure some won't care about the linearity but it bothered me and would seriously put me off playing through it again. There are some very cool moments, some cutscenes I would love to be able to rewatch and some nice interactions with the characters, but I think gameplay holds it back. Its better than XII but I wouldn't put it alongside the best games of the series.
