A game any FF fan should get.
-Gameplay- 9/10
I, for one, LOVE this new change in gameplay. I hated the random battles and how they never came when you needed them and always came when your party was about to die. Its taken a new turn, where you get to move around in the battle and occasionally avoid certain AoE spells and effects. The quickenings are the limit breaks of the game, although they do become useless about halfway through the game, or for me atleast. They do have cool animations if you havent seen them. The only downside is that getting a good chain is mostly luck and little skill. The licence board is somewhat like the FFX's sphere grid, except you can do whatever you want. You can fill it up for each character, and the only thing that makes the characters different are the stats. It may be a little confusing at first, same with the Gambit system, but a nice change overall. The gambit system now, somewhat makes the game less interactive. You can just put the controller down, and let your characters do the fighting for you, but you do have to change the gambits sometimes depending on the battle. It has a learning curve of ~5 minutes to get the fundamentals of fighting, while it can take a longer amount of time to get used to the gambit system, choosing the right gambits and putting them in order. The only downside i see to the gameplay is that it does summarize to a turn based hack-n-slash, and that i miss the world map in the previous FF games( besides X). I give it a 9/10.
-Graphics- 9/10
Pretty good graphics, cinematics are awesome. The summoning and quickening animations are pretty nice as well. i would love to know where Vaan got his abs though.
-Sound- 9/10
I think the voice acting is was done pretty well. The voices really fit the characters, especially Fran. She has a nice accent... and anatomy. Ive heard that it echoed in the beginning, but it didnt really happen to me, or i didnt take notice.
-Story- 7/10
The story is political for a change, and theres no romaticism, unless you count the marriage in the beginning between Ashe and her husband. Theres not alot of character development though, you dont really feel connected to any of the characters as you did in the other FF games.
There could be more of a reason than Vaan and Penelo were even in the story, they are just tagging along, providing no signifigance to the story-line besides the occasional conversation and cinematic.
Overall, i think this is a pretty good game that ANY ff gamer should get. but if you are someone who thinks that ff7 was the best game in existance and no game even compares to it. then you shouldnt get ff12 because then... i dont want you coming to the boards and complaining about how crappy it is.