My personal favourite game of all time! The hype is true, this game truly does rock!
Anyway that's enough about the games storyline, now for the gameplay. The game's battle system revolves around a bar that builds up over time. When this bar is full, the character in question can perform a move, whether it's a physical or magical attack is up to you. Throughout the game, you also pick up some summon attacks. When one of these is used a great beasts appears to lay down a more powerful attack, however, these attacks can only be used a certain amount of times each battle, depending on their experience level. Enemies also attack using the same system. When your character receives damage from an enemy, his or her Limit Break bar steadily fills up. A Limit Break is a super powerful physical attack that is specific to each character. Every character has a number of different Limit Breaks, (9 to be precise) which are acquired by using lower level limits a certain number of times, or killing a number of enemies with that character.
One of the key aspects of the game, is it's fantastic musical score. There are tracks for all atmospheres, fast paced music for fights or chases, slow paced music for love scenes or sad parts of the game, and just the general tracks, for traversing the vast world map on foot or in the airship.
The game's graphics were advanced for it's time, especially the FMV sequences. Not to drop any spoilers, but the lengthy ending video was mind blowing when I first played the game, I'd never seen anything like it!
10/10 Square, I don't expect you to top this any time soon!