Old School Gamers: Your opinion of FFX?

I enjoyed my playthrough, but I have several huge reservations about it.

1. Definitely not a fan of the like-character-kills-like-enemy battles. Some say its' strategic, I found it too easy and it got old within 10 hours.

2. Sphere Grid needed tweaking...I would have preferred a system where the game handles stat boosts behind the scenes and allow movement only for learning abilities. Manually doing every little stat was fun at first, then it got old. Good idea, slightly flawed implementation.

3. Traveling world map preferrable.

4. Aeons are too powerful and were no fun to use (aside from the Magus Sisters). Would have preferred something just being a quick spell and then move on.

5. Too linear. The travel set-up contributes something to that, but it really felt like it was constantly Point A-Travel-Along-Designated-Path-Point B-and-we're-really-going-to-take-our-time-doing-it.

6. Characters were okay...I liked the cast more than previous FF's, but I never got over my disliking of Nomura's style at any point. Wishy washy Yuna was annoying for most of the game though and all of the "Oh Great Summoner" dialogue threads were clicked over as fast as possible.

Overall, it was a fine game. The story was good, boss battles were much better than the normal battles (Boss Rush mode would have rocked), music and graphics were excellent and I thought the ending was satisfying (at least enough to be offended by the patchwork FFX-2 tried to do)...It was definitely the best RPG for the PS2 when it was released. Nowadays...Er, not so much. I still prefer the storyline, gameplay and pacing of FF4 and 6.

Edit: #7. Marboro's (the stat-effects plant monsters) were a BITCH in this game. I'm thinking mostly of the ones in the final area.

Jam it back in, in the dark.