I always wanted to play this cause of it´s reputation as one of the greatest final fantasy games out there, but I didnt have a ps2 back in the day and only recently got access to one.

I´ve heard a lot of great things about the game´s story, but I find it absolutely horrible: Dumb clichès and one ridiculous line after another, Im really struggling to get through it because as a final fantasy game does, it takes it´s sweet time to get going. I have to sit through these cutscenes that might have been mind-blowingly gorgeous at the time but just look kind of ok now, trying to skip as much dialogue as I can without missing story advancement. After about 15 minutes of cutscene I get to actually play, but although I enjoy the combat system and character progression the battles are kind of boring and not very challenging at all.

On top of that the hole thing is terribly linear and I really dislike the aesthetics. I have 3 aeons now and Im almost at the next temple and it is not getting any better, so here is my question to you guys: Will this lame story actually pay off with incredible twists near the end that will make me care about these characters and not roll my eyes at every single cheesy line or should I just stop now?.

To make matters worse I picked up FFX along with FFX-2 and FFXII and I booted XII just out of curiosity. It turns out that the opening cutscene and first 10 minutes of gameplay got me really excited about it cause it seems to fix all the problems that I have with X (open world, story seems interesting and moves along fine, etc.).

Thanks a bunch for any non-spoilery wisdom you could throw my way, and keep in mind these are all just my personal opinions.