I skimmed over your review. I stopped right when you started talking about the characters being realistic and "no more emo". Excuse me? What about Hope? All he does for the first half of the game is ***** and whine about his parents, or specifically, avenging (or not) his mother. To the point where Lightning has to act as a surrogate parent role in order to toughen him up and provide a laughable cliché excuse for two dimensional "character growth". Oh look, the tough chick softed up and the wussy child toughened up. You could see it coming a mile away and the reasons for making it happen were horribly contrived. Getting seperated at that junkyard-esque place just for the sake of alone time for character growth? Please.
I'm glad you recognise the gameplay as being the worst aspect of the game, but really, for the first half of the game (again) it's mashing A over and over and over. Well, in fairness, that's only completely true for the first act of the game, before you gain access to paradigm shifts. Then you press a second button to swap classes. But until then, it's just one button. Auto-battle is a terrible idea, the point of a video game is so the player can play the game. The only highlights of the combat were the boss fights. I will concede that defeating a boss is gratifying, but all the mooks before that are nothing bit time wasters.
If that weren't bad enough, did you know it's possible to glide through the entire game without upgrading your weapons or accessories once? How do i know this? Because in order to create the optimum equipment for the hunting missions at the end game content, you simply must not upgrade a thing, or you won't be able to get five stars on each mission because your gear won't be up to snuff. If you create a long RPG where you never once need to upgrade your gear, and still not be challenging as a result of that, something is wrong.
I won't talk about the linearity, because honestly, that's beating a dead horse. But you can't tell me it didn't make you woefully disappointed not to see the kind of lavish, grandiose towns we've come to expect. Think Lindblum from Final Fantasy 9 and Luca from Final Fantasy 10. I can swallow vendors being replaced by holodesks, but come on now. Towns are staple of the Final Fantasy series and reinforce the feeling of a living, breathing magical otherworld. Rather than hollow corridors populated by some sort of malicious beast or trooper.
As for the story, did you know after the first act, i still had no idea what was going on and so had to open up the glossary in order to understand what the hell was going on? In fact, during that Hope-Lightning "character development" bit i discussed earlier in the junkyard, i'd thought they had already left Cocoon. Turned out they hadn't. I had no idea what Pulse was, what Cocoon was, and what they were in relation to each other. Throwing you into the deep end of a new mythology is fine, as long as it is introduced to the player at a steady rate rather than throwing terms around and expecting the player to simply understand. I would also call the lack of any major 'Big Bad' to be another serious flaw in the story, as it forced me to lack the motivation for continuing. It's not Final Fantasy 8's Sorceress Edea or Final Fantasy 7's Sephiroth. It's fate. That's it. That's your Big Bad. Defying fate. However, Nyx Avatar from Persona 3 said it best; whether they die now or die from old age, death comes for you eventually. Now, both Persona 3 and Final Fantasy 13 dealt with fate, but the major defining difference is that you had a big bad in Persona 3, but the fact you didn't learn about it until the end of the game was unimportant because you had a clear goal - get to the top of the tower. You know something bad is up there, and the guardians you kill on your way up gives you an idea of what to expect. This lack of any real objective goal and visible antagonist really made the game hard to connect with and care about.
And another thing, calling your readers a psychopath is dreadfully unprofessional. I know user reviews are not and should not be held up to professional standards, but if you're putting your criticism up for public viewing, it should also be held accountable for public scrutiny. There's certain level of etiquette that should be maintained when writing and displaying your opinions.
Cyan is almost teal, and if you know Shawn, you know teal is awesome 
