As restricted and linear is it get's. Final Fantasy 13 is sadly a disappointment.
Story
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The game takes place mostly in the human society of Cocoon and follows Lightning, Sazh, Snow, Hope & Vanille. All of them live in Cocoon; however their all caught up in a purge against the fal'cie (people who are given magic, but also given orders to destroy Cocoon). With the purge exterminating everybody, our heroes try to escape and eventually become fal'cie themselves. Their now given a focus (mission) to destroy Cocoon and if they don't complete it, they'll turn into monsters (Cie'th), but if they do, they'll turn into crystals.
The story is confusing at first. It doesn't really explain anything, especially not what a Fal'cie and l'cie is, so you'll constantly be looking at the game's encyclopedia, just to figure out what's going on. A few hours in though, and the story actually becomes better and there's some good character development in there actually, however it begins being ultimately cliché during the game's last few chapters and throughout all of the story, you can't help but wonder who's the villain in all of this. The game lacks a villain and while there is an addition after chapter 9, it comes a bit late and the person is never explored on really. Besides that, the ending is just anti-climatic and rushed. The story certainly isn't the worst in the series, it's a big improvement over FF12, but despite the likeable characters (even Vanille and Snow is likeable!), the game lacks the emotional punch that the series is known for.
7.5
Gameplay
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Let's start with the battle system now shall we, before we get to exploration. The battle system is actually good in FF13. You can only control one of your party members, which is ok, because the A.I. is actually pretty good, they'll heal you and use the best attacks available. Another thing is the Paragram system, which sort of works like the job system in past Final Fantasy games, so you got the usual classes of warriors (Commander), white mages (Medic), black mages (Ravanger) and so forth. You can change them during battles, and you need too, in order to be able to get through some of the tougher battles later on in the game. It makes the players think more about strategy and as such it works extremely well.
After battles, you gain Crystogen points (CP), which can be used for The Crystarium. It works similar to Final Fantasy X's Sphere Grid. Every character moves on a grid and they use a certain amount of CP, in order to move forward and upgrade your stats. It's a good system that becomes better as you move into the game. With upgrading becoming expensive, you'll need to think about how you want to upgrade your characters.
Then there's exploration, which isn't as good as it used to be. All you do, is move forward, all the bloody time. There's very few branching paths in the game, and when there is, it only leads to treasures. As such, there's almost no side quests (for most of the game anyway), so you won't be missing anything throughout most of the game, but the continued linearity isn't the game's only problem. It's restricted as hell. You won't get CP until 3 hours in the game, and even when your finally allowed to upgrade, you can only do so a certain amount of times, and then you have to wait until the Crysterium get's expanded, which usually happens after a boss fight. Given that there's no way to grind in the game (except after a certain amount of time), it doesn't make any sense why it's just not open up from the beginning. The interaction with the world is non-existent as well. There's very few NPC's to speak to, no towns to explore and no mini-games, which removes most of the traditional Final Fantasy sense.
But it gets worse, after 7 hours, you can upgrade weapons (which works, but lacks a lot of depth found in other RPG's), after 24 hours, your allowed to decide who you want to control and have in your party, and after 30 hours, you get to Gran Pulse, which is where all of the side quests are, and it's also here you can grind and be prepared to the upcoming battles. So the game gradually opens up the further you get into it, but when it takes 30 hours just for the game to open up completely, casual gamers might be so bored from the linearity, that they might never make it that far.
The problems sadly don't end there. While the battle system is good, it does have one huge design flaw. Since you can only control one character, if that particular character dies, then its game over, even if your party members are still alive. It's frustrating, especially later on, as you get into Eidolon (Summons) fights. In these fights, you have to attack the Eidolons enough times, before they'll join you, and while they start out challenging, they later on become frustrating, as the game out of nowhere changes party leader and programs, making it almost impossible to pass through the fights on the first try, and given that the Eidolons also has attacks, that can kill the leader in one/two hits, the fights becomes more focused on luck, than skill. It doesn't help that there's a time limit in these fights either, so you can't think about them too much.
The fights drag on as well. Later in the game, the regular enemies have millions of health, and you do little damage on them, almost no matter how high your strength is, and if you don't grind in Gran Pulse, then you'll be struggling to just defeat some of the later monsters and bosses.
But for what it's worth, the linearity can sort of be forgiven. For the most part, the story is actually good, so it's worth to play it, just for the story, which saves some part of the game, and the A.I. always puts the party leader as top priority, so you'll always get healed as fast as possible, and the game does become better once you reach Gran Pulse.
The game takes close to 60 hours to complete, which is long, but depending on how much the linearity bores you, you probably won't even be able to finish the first 20/30 hours. When the game is over, there's a bunch of side quests in Gran Pulse to do, which are fun. But for actually replaying the whole game again... well it depends on how much you like the story.
7.5
Graphics & Sound
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The graphics are beautiful. The environments look stunning and the characters are extremely detailed and the frame rate never has issues, so it's a very beautiful game. It does have some low-res textures a few places, and the hair can look a bit weird. Furthermore, if you haven't got a HD TV, then you'll likely be facing lots of screen-tearing. As beautiful as it all is, it also feels a bit lifeless, as you can't interact with the environment.
The voice acting is actually good... even though Vanille's voice becomes annoying. The dialogue is actually translated well, even though it was translated just as they were doing the Japanese script, so that's a nice surprise, though there's still some awkward dialogue and it becomes horribly cliché near the end.
The music has its up downs, but for the most part, it's actually good, though some of the J-popish tracks could be better. If you've seen the ads for the game, then you've probably heard the song "My Hands" by Leona Lewis. It doesn't really fit the game at all, and it's only played during the ending as well (where it doesn't really fit either), and given that most people would probably be too bored to even get that far, it doesn't really advertise much for Leona, as was intended.
8.5
PS3 & Xbox 360
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The game is released on both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, which sparked a huge controversy when it was announced at E3 2008. The Xbox 360 version still runs a little bit better than the PS3 version, but the graphics are a bit worse. The audio, video and visuals are compressed, and as such, the graphical differences between the versions are notable. Furthermore, the 360 version comes on 3 discs, which might bring some nostalgia to some fans. Overall, the 360 version isn't a bad version, but if you can chose, it's best to go with the PS3 version.
Overall
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While a improvement over Final Fantasy 12 and not the worst Final Fantasy game, Final Fantasy 13 is so linear and restricted, that it's bound to put off fans. Does it live up to expectations? The answer, is no. While still a good game, it's sadly also a disappointment.