Story, Character, and Action all mixed into one amazingly epic game.
Lets start with the level up system called the "Sphere Grid." This grid isn't unique to each person, in fact they all use the same grid but all start at different spots. If you put enough time into the game, you can have every person travel around the entire "Sphere Grid" which will make them all elite characters. With EXP gained through battle you can travel the grid, but not every thing can be accessed. You also gain spheres through battle that can only be used in the right spots on the "Sphere Grid." This is the tricky part because some spheres are more rare than others and can be a real pain to find, but this adds to the fun of one of the mini-quest.
Next on the list were in-depth characters. Starting with the very first character, we have a very sporty guy named Tidus who is like the knight class of previous FF games. Tidus witnesses a terrible monstrosity start to destroy his town. While this is happening we meet our second character, Auron who is going to be the big heavy hitting warrior. Auron helps Tidus escape from the calamity befalling his city, but after that we don't see him for a while After a few more scenes we meet a perky girl named Rikku who is the thief We only see her for a little bit before you have to leave her. Then we meet Wakka who will be the ranger. He is another sporty guy that takes you to meet 2 more members of what will be your party throughout the game. These two people are Yuna and Lulu. Yuna is the starting white mage of the group of the group. She will also be a major help when it comes to boss battles for a special power that she has you will find out in the game. Then there is Lulu who is the black mage. Really there is enough said about her here, more will be mentioned in the game. After a couple more scenes we meet the final character, Kimahri. He will be the blue mage of the group. Apart from learning everyone's attacks on the "Sphere Grid" and a few from monsters, you will find him useless. These characters have in-depth stories behind them but to learn them you will have to actually play the game because I'm not one for spoilers.
Leaving out the story components and weapons because spoiling story isn't fun and telling about the many weapons is the same. So I will make the weapon and armor section short. You gain weapons through battle and story. You have to buy all armor and some weapons. Weapons and armor have tweaks to the that help in battle ans later in the game you can customize your own weapons and armor.
Next is the battle system. In previous games it was all active time battle where if you sat around and did nothing, the enemy would keep attacking you. This was not so in FFI, FFII, FFIII and FFX where they were turn based battle. The nifty part of the Turn based battle is FFX was that it had more quirks in it than normal. if someone was faster than everything else then they might be able to attack multiple time in a row before anything else does. Also you are able to substitute characters for others in the middle of battle.
Finally we have our mini quest. I mentioned one earlier in the "Sphere Grid" section. The mini quest that will make sphere hunting fun is the monster arena quest. At a certain point in the game you will reach a monster arena where you take on the quest to capture all the monsters in the world, and when you collect them the owner will tweak with some and make super monsters that will take time to fight but will give you lots of EXP and also rare spheres. other quest include the search for the Al Bhed Primers to help you to understand certain people throughout the game, The Cactuar quest where you have to find all the missing Cactuar. The lightning dodging quest, self explanatory and also the hardest to beat, gathering the ultimate weapons for everyone, and many more. These will take tons of time to beat but they will be fun too.