It's the general consensus that Versus XIII will be largely different from FFXIII and therefore "a better game", even though every FFXIII game in the Fabula project are all related to each other in some way. It's why I found it funny there's so much hate for FFXIII yet there's so much love for Versus XIII/Type-O.

Sad thing is, there's even hate for what XIII-2 "brought back", but still was well received, just means people are being really fickle about certain aspects they deem to what makes a game 'good' since for example you mention the overworld, XIII-2 brought back open exploration, which a lot of people hated because it's "too open ended" lol.