I can understand why people don't like the game, if you try to watch all the cutscenes and never play the game fully, you won't get the impact and good story telling, as far as the game being linear, I don't see the problem there, because the battle system is fast paced and the music is amazing and the graphics are awesome, I think FFXIII was just a case of the game being a bit different from 7 up to 12, so people judged it harshly, same happened to FFXV but for different reasons.