Its a great game
The Active Dimension Battle system is a bit like Final Fantasy VII, but with nice couple of twists. You can avoid fights that you do not want to get into or those your characters are not strong enough to contend in. If the fight is going south, you can always flee the battle (with a few minor exceptions that you can guess? boss and some esper fights) until the monster(s) give up the chase or you escape the area there in. The gambits option was an outstanding idea. Having the option of setting up some automated actions for your party members to do when an enemy is near or heal a party member if there below a specified health percentage. Granted you have to find or buy many of the options for the gambit slots, but most of them are worth having in your arsenal. I have been in quite a few fights in the game where I was glad that a few gambits for the party members were set to heal, protect, and shell each other when there HP was getting low.
I was a bit disappointed that I never received any gil after killing the first few monsters. The whole idea of collecting and selling loot that I acquired was a bit annoying, but it's the only way to get certain weapons and armors. There are quite a few sweet weapons out there to collect, but it requires a lot of time spent hunting and kill specific monster to get the proper loot.
FFXII's licensing board reminded of upgraded version of FFX's powers map. Unlike with Tidas's slow progression into higher levels to gain more powers and skills, Vaan is so much easier weather the character is active or not the character receives license points for every monster killed to unlock his powers and skills. On the down side, Vaan has to buy his magic, skills, and the majority armament.
Every Final Fantasy fan should give this game try. It is a great game.