Yes, I know, I am late, ah well >xD I like to pick up games for $20 (and used too), what can I say. Anyhoo what I think of it so far... at first I was kind of ambivalent, sort of like, woah this is really different! But after a couple hours of leveling up I gotta say I am totally addicted to the real-time fighting, and the gambits that allows you to set your party's behavior so you don't actually have to do any tedious work involved in something leveling up, all you gotta do is control the party leader's movement. I find watching my party going after the skeletons on their own insanely gratifying hahaha. And the graphics are definitely very very nice. I've always been a sucker for purty FF CG movies so that's a plus for me. And seriously now, I wouldn't believe you if you said you didn't play for the pretty graphics as a FF fan lol XD

I can't really comment on the story (or lack of one) so far because I'm still in Lhusu mines busying leveling up my characters, accumulate license points and trying to max out their HP, because I've discovered and fallen in love with that room where skeletons just keep popping up and popping up and you can get 40+ chains killing skeletons XD So if anyone posts here don't ruin anything for me please x3; Ashe is still "Amalia" lol.

At first the whole license thing was a bit disorienting because that combined with gambits sorta provided too many options! And also it was kind of disconcerting not to be able to buy a super cool weapon and immediately equip it, you had to check if you had acquired the license for it first. Now that I'm used to the license system - makes me more conscious of individual characters' "development" so to speak. Although now that I say that licenses for armor/weapons are rather annoying, but I guess the automatic "optimize" feature for equipment helps.

As to how it holds up to other FF games - again I can't really comment on this, because I've only played FFX and FFX-2 in their entirety, so I'm not a long-running FF fan... although what first caught my attention was the purty opening video to FFVIII, watched it on my friend's computer when we attempted to try to play it together in high school - and failed utterly at comprehending the system lol. But, again I'm really likely the real-time battle mode and the gambits right now, and that's striking me as the biggest difference so far comparing XII to X. I guess this might spoil me for the older games (I've always wanted to go back and play some of the older FF games). Again, I can't comment much on the story so far, but it's keeping my attention so far. Overall though, I'm liking it XD I'm also soooo addicted, totally in that stage almost every waking hour of my day when I'm not at work I'm thinking about playing/doing mad leveling up in FFXII...

well I play for the graphics too, but to keep me moving along the game a nice plot is always necessary, I think this time it was kind of a, hey...let's make a war story, a princess, a guy who is at first a nobody, very random people, let's put them together, and just to make it FF-ish let's create all these weird characters, including crocodiles, as citizens, there you go, a nice FF......
it's my opinion afterall but it did was disappointing for me, even when you are like waiting to see the cg clips to know if something major is gonna happen, like waiting for awesomess.....it's.....bleh...completely, I'm not saying either that to work as a great game it needs a romantic story, I'm not too fan of those actually, but comparing to a game like it was FFVII or even the VIII, taking out that whole squall+rinoa stuff, the stories were like, woa, these guys really have an amazing imagination, the two games were really different from each other, they didnt need to include stuff from previous games to make it good , and at the end for a person who really enjoys the series it was a deal of I like more this story than the other, rather than oh..I like this one because it had more of this...even FFX, which is extremelyyy romantic has an extraordinary plot, combaining a past full of technology with a future starting from zero ground, (not talking about the FFX-2, weird stuff haha , I actually played before the X, dont know what happened there..)

I played it however like a fool in front of the tv hours straight, and I dont regret doing it, just dont think it was a good one, or actually, maybe IT was a good one but FF, it's kinda always great..

In all honesty, FF has never really been captivating in my mind for some kind of well written story. If anything, I find the actual story for any of the games unoriginal and uninspiring. Though really the same can be said about the majority of games imo. Some do transcend this like the MGS series which I found to be incredibly well written and thought out, but on the whole I play games simply for gameplay. Because of this, I have not thoroughly enjoyed an FF after 6.
VII was good but it was basically the same old just with cg graphics and cinematics. VIII in regards to gameplay was a fucking mess, probably the worst battle system out of all the FFs Ive played. IX I found like the old ones but worse, only with I guess better graphics. X was actually somewhat innovative in my mind. It was different and the type of setting they created seemed unique at the time, not to mention they at least tried to be somewhat unconventional with the story. X-2 and later, I had no interest in playing honestly. Im interested somewhat in XII really, just cause alot of the major talents behind the older works are absent here. One case being, and the one I care about the most, no Nobuo Uematsu. His music is definitely what made FF at all magical in my own experience and without it, I doubt I would have liked them as much as I did. Theres defintiely better RPGs out there i.e Tales of Phantasia, Terranigma, Xenogears, etc....but when it comes down to it, nothing beats Nobuo's music.

Im with you flyin'..Im even cheaper though, I burnt my copy. :3

X was amazing, I've played that game maddd times. As for XII, the only disappointing aspect of it was the wait one endures to fly the pirate ships like the originally said you'd be able to, and then you never can, and maybe the length (a bit short). As for the story, its pretty original, it doesn't fall into your typical FF mold ...which I guess could make it a bit boring for some though. I hateee love triangles and romantic drama and loss of memory. Getting through FFVII was a freaking nightmare, at every corner there was a novela-ish twist.
Like flyin' said, the controls and brand new system was a bit of a pain at first, but once you get used to it...its so much freaking fun. In comparison to previous faves like X and X-2 however, XII DOES fall a bit short, but it's still an amazing game.

The gameplay threw me off a bit and the camera movement but after a few minutes i got the hang of it and proceeded to waste hours playing.

in ff12 you have the decision on what to do with your character if he's gonna be a knight a wizard or a priest much like in ff tactics which i thought was great. The espers are awesome...i use them to significantly lessen the boss's hp and not hurting any of your party mwehehe...cept your mp >_> i'm obsessed with having my players to all have healing powers :'D which they all do...sometimes i'm fighting a boss and all i do is heal everybody haha hence the fight takes ages...although with ff12 because of the gambit system your comrades could be mindlessly attacking the enemy and you're there mindlessly healing everybody :'D

it's a sad fact for me that i rarely pay attention to the story when i play rpgs, i mean i follow it and know what's happening but i usually don't mind whatever is going on haha...

The story for FFX was definitely pretty awesome, even though I can't remember some of the finer points now, I remember being blown away. When I finish XII I might picked up a used copy of X at Gamestop - I've been eying used copies there for ages. I fell in love with Tidus lol, the ending of X was pretty much the only reason why I played X-2. I'm not sure why X-2 gets so much hate though. I mean... Tidus wasn't really in it... and yes, fan service/eye candy (for the male audience) abounded, but I'm usually pretty sensitive to that kind of thing and it didn't bother me too much. I haven't really played enough games to say whether or not having a good story matters in a RPG. Since I'm enjoying XII so far, and the story hasn't been all that gripping, I guess I'm leaning towards the "doesn't matter as much" camp xD Although I still have hopes that something will happen towards middle/end that will blow me away, and I do like political plots/intrigue x3;

Nobuo Uematsu is utterly amazing, I think I have most of the FFX piano variations. Definitely the music for XII hasn't been very impressive at all. I'm still not that far, but I'm getting one or two themes drilled into my head... That might be my main complaint for the game right now, but I'm still utterly obsessed with it - especially with gaining LPs and levelling up, I seem to be so addicted to that right now that advancing the story is just something I do when I can't beat hunts anymore or am bored with running around in the same area for hours on end lol.

I remember actually seeing one of the FF concerts, when it played in SF. As nerdy as it was, it was pretty cool to see some of Nobuo's renditions played with a large professional symphony...