this is nowhere near as bad as everyone says it is. There is just a loud portion of people who hate things that are different and persuade the majority that this game sucks. It really doesn't, and is truly worthy of being part of the series.
- The main reason for this is that it takes out all of the monotony out of the battles. Instead of me having to physically go and select cure every turn, I can instead just get Hope to switch to medic and he does it automatically. The macro level battle system places the focus on what's more important: strategy. It's about what roles my characters fulfill at any one point in the battle. I don't get bogged down in having to select specific commands every turn. Like yeah, that option is there, but there's really no need to do so once you have scanned an enemy. All the Final Fantasy elements are there, they're just presented in a new way, and there's nothing wrong with the thirteenth game in a series trying something new. Granted, the whole "if the party member dies that's a game over" is kind of annoying, that often only happens when I was trying to kill something way too powerful at that point in the game (cough cough Zinitra).
- The 'hallway simulator' argument doesn't really bother me either. There's enough side paths to break up the linearity, and I'm the kind of person who looks up dungeon maps anyway, as I can't stand the idea that I might have missed a chest. There are a few points where the game risked becoming a slog, but those were pretty limited. But I don't know why people complain about this, because X was a giant hallway too, and that hid it about as well as this game did. Both games are almost the same in terms of linearity. The crystarium system is basically just a more streamlined sphere grid.
- the story is fine. I'll be honest, after Oerba, I got completely lost narrative wise, but the only third act in the series that hasn't made me very confused is VI. This plot was cool, from what I understood of it: an interesting hypothetical of what would happen if we had gods that were intentionally antagonistic. It is perhaps a bit too melodramatic in places, but that's understandable, seeing as the characters are undergoing a massive amount of trauma. Some of their coping mechanisms don't really make sense, and Vanille's voice is perhaps a bit too annoying, but I did as a whole enjoy my experience with this game. It has a real cinematic feel because of the settings and the battle system, and that really enhances the Final Fantasy experience in my opinion.
- The job system is nice. It provides the bread and butter roles of the franchise in an easy to understand package. The game takes its time to introduce each job, so that you know what each one does. I appreciate that. I also REALLY appreciate how they handled status effects in this game. No debuffs can outright cheese anything, so the game doesn't really have a need to make bosses immune to everything (looking at you, Final Fantasy XII). Debuffs and buffs actually serve a purpose in this game, they're not mere afterthoughts. Even the final boss can have debuffs put on them! It really blends with the whole strategy thing from earlier, where because there is a macro-level focus, the game just allows to throw more generalised debuffs around the place that actually do meaningful stuff.
- I only really have two complaints, the first one of which is the weapon upgrade system. It's a bit annoying to have to upgrade a weapon to see if it's going to actually be of any use. And upgrading weapons and accessories basically just boils down to pumping a whole lot of money into one. And most of the time I didn't really feel a noticeable difference though.
- The other gripe I'd have is that some of the hunts on Gran Pulse are a bit too backtrack heavy. The underground mines wasn't any more interesting the fifth time I had to go up and down it's linear corridors. If they had allowed fast travel between any completed crystals, that would have eliminated a lot of pointless backtracking through weak enemies that just get in my way
- The music was fine. It's probably my least favourite OST in the franchise, as there's only two tracks I can actually hum the melody to. Barthandelus' boss fight music is admittedly a bop.
- Lastly, I really like the vibe of the world in this game. The futuristic city/attire of Cocoon was somehting I think was missing in previous games, as there is only so many ways you can show castles and mountains until they start to get boring. Like true, there aren't any towns in this game, but I think that works with the story and isolated feel the game has going for it. It wouldn't really make sense for Cocoon citizens to just politely sell potions to these wanted criminals. And Pulse is supposed to be a barren wasteland, and putting a town there would have backtracked on that point that they were drilling into us for half the game.
And there actually ARE towns in this game. There's three of them that you go through in the game: Palumpolum, Nautilus and Oerba. They each serve a narrative purpose in the game, and you do get to hear the NPCs perspectives on you in two of those instances. The only difference with these towns is that they are a) citites and b) don't need to serve the same purpose, as you can buy literally anything from save stations. This is actually an improvement over X, as in that game, you could only buy items at towns, and had to go long stretches stuck with the items you had.

tl;dr: this game is fun, you guys are just mean.