I finally managed to finish FF12. And I gotta say...it wasn't horrible. It probably gets a lot more flak then it really should.

I didn't have any real major problem with it till much later in the game. And that generally came from the apparent NEED to grind, not for levels or weapons, but for Money. The amount of money in this game is a little ridiculously lacking and its fairly hard to make a good amount of money. But I suppose other then that its not too bad.

Espers in general feel far too weak...I mean, they die far too easily to useful in major situations. I pretty much had to summon Zeromous in the final battle like 5 times before I could keep him alive long enough to use his final move. But I digress.

The hard part of this game is the sidequests, and those are what will absorb most of your time and effort. As the storyline itself is actually fairly short and easy, with the final bosses level only being 55. So if you get around that level with your characters you should be fine.

As far as the gameplay goes I actually enjoyed it. It made you use your brain, since you couldn't really just go in swinging with controlling each character as you wanted. It would become horribly boring Micromanagement, so you do have to use your gambits. And those can make some fairly unique tactical operations.

Over ALL though...I guess I'd have to give it a 7.5-8/10. By no means is it a perfect FF game, and by no means is it the worst. Its an okay FF game. If your die-hard on the 'take turns' methodology of the previous FF games its not TOO far from that, its just like you might get to attack more frequently, but it certainly isn't like Kingdom Hearts. If you haven't yet, I'd say give FF12 a shot, I'm sure its pretty cheap by now. If you can find it for 20-40 bucks, I'd say its a worthy buy.

And unless your REALLY die-hard bent on getting the Ultimate weapons, I'd say pass on it as the requirements to get them are the most RIDICULOUS things I've seen. This is probably the most ridiculous FF game to get the ultimate weapons, and by the time you CAN get them you don't need them anyways...so its like, whats the point?