I've played all of the numbered games except for XI (although I haven't completed II or III), and I still really enjoyed FFXII.
I actually thought the plot itself was decent. The terrible pacing of the game made it seem a lot worse than it was though. Long dungeon -> story cutscene -> long dungeon -> story cutscene -> long dungeon -> story cutscene. That was essentially what a lot of the game consisted of. Getting addicted to the hunts half-way through the game didn't help either (although that was my fault more than anything). I think the fact that Vayne was working behind the scenes for a lot of the game put a lot of people off too, but that was the style of the story, and I thought it actually worked quite well, apart from the pacing issues that I mentioned.
The characters...ugh. I hated Vaan and Penelo. The rest of them were decent though.
The localisation of the game was incredible and IMO it was the best one in the series yet, and still remains the best one. The dialogue was fantastic, and I thought it was great how they added in different regions and dialects/accents. It really made the world come alive. And speaking of the world, I thought it was very convincing, especially the different towns and cities throughout the game.
The License Board was OK, but I think it gave too much control to the player. The International version showed how it should have been done IMO.
I really liked the battle system. It was nice being able to automate some of the more mundane tasks, like healing, and focus on the combat. Gambits were always optional anyway. I also thought it was great how SE managed to make battling more seamless (by removing random battles and having enemies on the screen at all times), and still keep in the ATB system of the older games. It made for some fun battles.
Speaking of fun battles, the hunts and the Espers were a great deal of fun. They gave me so many hours of entertainment it's not true. My first playthrough took in excess of 100 hours.
The interconnected areas worked a treat too, and opened up a lot of different exploration options throughout the game.
I hated the random chests though. I wouldn't have bothered so much if just the contents were random (and maybe 20/80 at the worst), but the actual appearance of some chests being random too was an absolute pain. If I wanted to subject myself to that, I'd play Diablo II.
And don't even get me started on NOT taking some treasures to get an ultimate weapon, or the fact that an item that's meant to increase your chances of finding good items actually increases your chance of picking up garbage (I thought they would have learned after FFVIII had the exact same problem with the Rare Item ability, but obviously not).
So, while the game had a few things that I didn't like, I still had a lot of fun going through it. I don't think it's the best FF game, but I don't think it deserves to be placed anywhere near the bottom either.
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