Pretty odd for a Final Fantasy game, but much better than most people give it credit for.
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Pros:
+ Story Continuation: While some continuations of Final Fantasy games have come off as unnecessary and laboured (i.e. anything that FFVII spawned), this one actually came off quite naturally. The story, setting and characters of FFX are all continued in an interesting and convincing manner, while still remaining distinct enough from the original to justify its existence.
+ Bizzarre Humour: The demented Charlie's Angels-ness and general light-hearted tone is fun, whether you buy into it or just marvel at how weird it is!
+ Speedy Fighting: After the turn-based fighting of FFX, FFX-2 goes in the exact opposite direction by using a variation of ATB where characters can perform actions at the same time, stopping the enemy mid-flow or making each-other's moves more powerful. It all adds up to very brisk, involving battles (if slightly less strategic).
+ Dresspheres: The Dressphere system is essentially a tarted up version of the job system from FFV, but with even deeper customizability and the ability to change class mid-battle, it makes for an engrossing means of developing a team.
+ Save Continuation: Once you finish the game, you are given the option of starting a fresh one with all your items and learned skills intact, but with your levels reset. This is a great way of allowing players to go through again and find the things they missed, without being too repetitive and frustrating, and is a feature I would like to see more of in future.
+ Branching Story: The ability to choose a side/direction in the story at key moments is a brilliant feature, and is cunningly manipulated in that you can't complete the game 100% unless you go through again and see what would have happened if you took the other path. You also get to choose from the start what order you visit places and do their quests in, which has its limitations (you'll be destroyed if you go certain places before others, and possibly miss out on large chunks of story). but is still a nice touch to shake things up from FFX.
+ Secrets & Sidequests: There are many secrets to be uncovered throughout the game, and more so than any other game in the series, there's always a reason to come back to each and every location in the game.
Cons:
- Less Epic: Through a combination of the light-hearted tone, the revisited environments and the ability to jet around at will, the game feels much less epic than most Final Fantasy games.
- Lack of Exploration: There are several new bits to explore, with varying degrees of interestingness, but the vast majority of the time you'll be revisiting locales from FFX, which diminishes the sense of exploration somewhat.
- Uninteresting Minigames: I appreciate that they're back again, but the minigames just aren't very fun or different from the normal gameplay - having crazy things like FFVII's snowboarding and motorbiking is far more fun.
- Slow Start: It takes a little while for the story to kick in, along with some of the running sidequests, but it's well worth it when they do.
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You could accuse FFX-2 of being whimsical and slightly insubstantial, but I just don't see that as justification enough for how much hatred this game inspired. It makes a lot of changes to the formula (with varying degrees of success), and may worry some people with its dementedly girly tone, but look through the glitz and you've got yet another solid Final Fantasy.