What consumers expect of a FF-title

[Malakhim]

While it's true that the 6+ million sales of FFXIII might not necessarily be indicative of its quality, it has an aggregate score on Metacritic(which I'm usually loathe to cite) of around 85%, and even if only half of the people that bought it actually enjoyed it, that's still around 3 million people who enjoyed the game immensely(and as a guy who's gone through it 3 times over the course of its release year, I proudly count myself as one of those).

Although I can't really defend the game as much as say FFXII, since it had a pretty goofy development cycle and a lot of misdirection, I feel that it had a pretty interesting group of flawed characters that grew as the story progressed, beautiful visual and audio atmosphere(Hamauzu is brilliant), and a pretty interesting take on the ATB system.

"It's too linear!"

What were you doing in those towns in other FF games anyway other than buying gear and waiting for the next storyline
"hitbox" to trigger? News flash: Most if not all entries in the series(and JRPGs in general) are linear as all hell.

"Hope was a whiny bitch!"

I'd personally hate to meet the deranged psychopath who saw his mother die in front of him while having to suffer through the banal bullshit of the nonchalant asshole who's pretty much responsible, while being branded a freak of nature and condemned by all mankind just because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time and not break a sweat.