Annoyingly Repetitive
The game starts off looking interesting with the cinematic; unfortunately it goes on a very steep downhill spiral after that.
At first I was extremely confused with how slow the game play was. I kept been asked to talk to NPCs for no reason and each time I tried to reach the particular NPC I was interrupted by annoying fight scenes that pop out of nowhere and are followed by "very cool fight scenes" – if you can call it that. These fights are repetitive, sluggish and tedious. While you are in the fight all your characters will run in place as they take turns with the enemies to attack each other. Ironically the turn base takes zero skill to master or to give you an edge over the enemy like other turn base games do.
The story lacked any form of intelligence or creativity. It felt even more repetitive and plain than the boring fight scenes. In fact, most of the story is unclear, people give you scars but then they are friendly after, then unfriendly, or even an enemy, then they want to be allies... it made no sense. Ideally I like games with a solid storyline and a function for me to actually follow the narrative.
I was also disappointed by the unpleasant sounds the game has. At some point in the game I had to cut the volume off my television because the repetitive sounds were making me go crazy.
The game has in-game mini games that put all the annoying factors the real game has and multiplies them by ten then lets you play them. The memory of the card game still haunts me.
Thanks to this game I have never ever bothered looking or playing another Final Fantasy game.