Taking issue with the linearity of the early game is illogical when the mainstream pinnacle of the series involved being in a single goddamn city for ~8 hours.

Jeremy Parish over at 1UP wrote a pretty dope look at the combat system explaining how the removal of MP and auto-healing after battle has led to significantly greater room for difficult battle strategies and enabling skills to be almost universally relevant. But of course the knuckleheads on the internet think removing MP and auto-healing is dumbing things down.

Link: http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=9013668 (a minor spoiler in the first paragraph.)