Personally, I think grinding in this game is mostly unneeded; I didn't do much of it, anyway. Most of the boss fights come down to correct use of Paradigm shifts and abusing the ATB bar trick (which most people call 'ATB cancelling', look it up on Google). The difficulty does ramp up a bit after chapter 10, though, particularly the bosses.
As I mentioned, sidequests are unfortunately quite sparse, which I found to be the biggest disappointment, considering all previous FFs had a very rich post-game. The biggest 'sidequest' is doing a series of hunts, which involve fighting progressively harder marks. There are 60+ missions in all, so it should take some time all in all. Beside that, it's mostly grinding to upgrade equipment to their ultimate forms, and that's it.The linearity is really starting to get monotonous, it was already after some hours, but now that there's still no change, pretty dull. But as I mentioned before, I'm not so much offended by linear games.
Aren't there good sidequests later? I thought the world and map wouldn't open up a bit after chapter 10, can you confirm that?
This is where Square fails the most, I think.
True, money is quite sparse for most of the game, so it really isn't efficient to do much upgrading before chapter 11. I'd upgrade only the weapons of the characters that you use most, and leave the rest for later.I also didn't upgrade any weapon or similar, neither did I buy/sell something in any shop. I'm playing with the official guide, and they state that in the beginning you don't really have to do that, as it wouldn't really matter. I should do that only later in the game. Is that true?
Yeah, it's almost impossible to earn cash in this game in an efficient manner until you reach chapter 11. You could sell stuff, but remember: if you're planning on achieving ALL trophies in the game, don't sell off anything that you don't have duplicates for. There is one trophy that requires you to have held every single accessory and weapon there is in the game, so if you sell of something that only appears once during the entire playthrough, you won't be able to get the trophy since you won't be able to upgrade that piece of equipment.Btw, I have 5.900 Gil so far, and that after almost 25 hours, that's really strange, in other FF titles, you were always amassing Gil to the infinity. But when I will sell some stuff, I will get some anyway.