I gave Final Fantasy XII a good workout this weekend, about 8 hours worth on the game clock.  So, my first impressions as promised:

•  Very first impressions:  The graphics in this game are *gorgeous*.  Especially in the CG's, where all the landscapes and vehicles look like you could just reach out and touch them.  Nice eye candy to hook me into wanting to play, for sure. :)

•  There's something... odd... about the character models, but I can't put a finger on it.  Either the shading is off, or they have a weird texture on the skin, or something, but everyone looks like they're either covered with or made out of sand.  A little distracting at first but I don't really notice it now.

•  The storyline so far is very heavy for a Final Fantasy game.  The first tutorial level ends with your guy getting killed by his own mentor fellow, then when the 'real' game starts, you play as his little brother two years later.  A few tutorial-style fetch quests later, and I'm currently thrown in a dungeon and left for dead.

•  As much as has been made about the combat system, I personally like it a lot.  There's just as much strategy in the 'gambit' system as the old ATB stuff, it's just that now once you figure out what you want your strategy to be, you only have to tell the game once.  You still have to pay attention during battles to make sure everythings going according to plan, and really, did any of us play Final Fantasy because we just *really love* choosing stuff from menus repetitively?  I am looking forward to being able to buy better gambit targets, though.  It seems very limited so far, so I'm having to interject manual commands a lot for things like stealing and antidotes.

This one also rates a 9+ from me so far; I'll just call it a 9.5 for now.  Between this and Okami, it looks like I have stuff to play at least until Christmas, now.