I bought the last one pretty much solely because they took so long to release it, and I hadn't played an FF game in a while. I've never played a game with more annoying characters. It was more linear than CoD, too. And the graphics weren't that great, in the end.

I disagree with everything except the linear part (which I don't consider to be a bad thing in this particular case). I found the characters to be interesting, and surprisingly non-cliched. I still think it's one of the best looking multiplatform games released so far.