FFTA2 is such a great game, but there could be so many thing done better with only a little effort put in it.
When I started the game, I was anticipating a neat and exciting story like in all FFs. I don't know how you see it, but to me the story seems to be pretty shallow, without thrilling moments and no main story thread. You have to travel through Ivalice and experience adventures to fill the pages of a journal that mysteriously turns up to be in your belt pouch. I was really expecting more.
Now for gameplay. The basics of battling are explained right in the beginning but the jobs system and abilites learning should be explained more. There are tons of people on the forums asking how should I get this and that job etc. And this is not the only thing not explained properly. The MVP, smash gauge and many other game schematics are not explained. I've played nearly 30 hours now and I still don't know what are they for. If I hadn't played FFTA I would be pretty lost even in abilites, their learning, setting them on and off and combining them properly. This game really has a steep learning curve. I would also like to mention the laws. They are only applied on your team, which I find pretty lame. What the hell does this mean? Your whole team is restricted to use magic, while the other clan happily casts powerful spells on you. Thats really odd. Of course you have the clan privilege if you uphold the law, but sometimes it is impossible to uphold it if the other team doesn't have to. Both teams should be restricted by the same law while each team chooses its own clan privilege.
Battles - they are really fun to play, but sometimes it costs lots of nerve not to throw the DS away, because sometimes the battles can take even an hour to fight. On the contrary to FFTA, here can come more enemies on the battlefield during the battle, which can be both challenging and frustrating.
The bodies of dead characters don't stay on the battlefield, but they vanish and can be revived (if you didn't break the law) by raise or phoenix down on an adjacent square to the player. But this has quite a bug. I played a mission, where 3 characters were guests, they were playing on my side and were controlled by the game. But because the characters were scripted to say something after the battle, they couldn't die. Their health stopped on 1HP and the enemy could strike them as many times as he could but they didn't die. And while the enemy was attacking these characters which were 'immortal' and not my own, i could happily fight the monsters with no casualties.
In addition, there are not many options in the game, I would like to see how many XP do the units get after successful hits, now you only see how many XP on the after battle screen, which is also the only place where the units level up which seem pretty weird for me. Also on the map, it would be great to see in which area you have missions to accomplish. It works only for the main storyline quests, but it would spare a lot of time, if there was a number on every area that would indicate how many missions are located in that particular area. Or there could be info about this on the upper screen, even with the list of missions in this area, you could list through the upper screens with select or start, which are not utilized in the game, there could be clan info, and area info. Really simple. Now you have to go to clan info, there to quest list, select every quest and remember where it is located. When you have 5 quests or more, it is just frustrating to remember where do you have to be in how many days.
A very neat minigame are the auctions. You get some 'tokens' that are worth 1,2,3 coins (in the auction you can win some tokens that are worth 5 coins as a bonus) and for every area on the map there is an auction in which you battle with other clans. Who wins, controls the area which gives him some advantages(you get some items, the fees are lowered etc.). At first I thought I will just bet as much as I can, but later you can recognize how much the other clans will bet from the way their representative character on the screen behaves. If it screams the clan will bet a 5 token, it it shakes the head it won't bet etc. It is really interesting to watch all the other clans, how much will they bet, how much they bet so far, and according to that you bet the lowest token to still be the winner.
Another new battle type is a speed battle. 4 units from your clan fight with 4 units from another one (not against each other), and who gives the final blow to the enemy boss, wins.
To continue with, was someone else expecting multiplayer battles as much as I did? I would love to play wifi battles with my friends, but we didn't get any kind of MP. Unfortunately, this is probably the biggest disapointment for me. Why didn't they implement MP in such a great game like this? I would like to hear any good reason, really....
To sum it up. This is really a great game, its a lot of fun to battle, it brings a lot of new ideas like the auctions. speed battles but there could be fixed so many thing with so little effort and this game would be really god like.