It'll be around forever, this game will not be allowed to die!
Personally the exrta gameplay quirks and odd little innovations do it for me. Each characters individual inventory is an infuriatingly great idea; more realistic and pleasing than most other games but forces you to think about what to give to who and to rationlise your overall inventory because it isn't very large anyway.
The Djinni system is extremely well done in my opinion; use a powerful Djinni spell for the price of, not PP, but your stats and smetimes your psynergy skills, but then, while they sit there not powering you up on standby, you can pull them all together and unleash insane summons, which, goin with my first statement, are very pleasing to the eye. The puzzles in the game are agonizising but so much fun because they really do require thought to beat; something which (in my humble opinion) has not been overlly seen in the past. You have to use your psynergy skills to interact with various bits and bots in the certain area, forcing you to have either reached crucial points in the story or be strong enough; in itself meaning that sometimes you must heavily backtrack to a puzzle you noticed a long time before but couldn't solve. One little quirk i like is the Game Tickets and Lucky Medals; you're picking them up ten to the dozen from the very start of the game but have no apparent use for them except to sell them - you can choose to keep them or hoarde in cash from them; until you get to Tolbi; can you be bothered using them for their uses?
I can scarceley think of anything i don't like about the game...the unusuals like the Lamakan deserts heat scale, the fact that you can get by without Djinni, the numerous little sidequests; it's all brilliant. A little quarrel is that the rather long scenes can get a bit old on replay. My only real quarrel is the (as often enough mentioned) abrubtly ended and quite short storyline, but that was totally forgiven upon the release of Lost Age.
Who needs a summary after reading that; i think it's brilliant; an airtight game; classic RPG; immortal story..