Gorgeous graphics, but lacking in other respects.
The gambit system was a great innovation. However, I think it should have been treated as a requirement rather than a luxury. That is, I shouldn't have to work to get gambits and make the AI behave how I want. When I have to manually input stuff because I don't have the gambit yet, it makes me feel like I'm being forced to do chores. Being able to copy gambits to other characters or creating sets of gambits that any character can use would have made the game far more enjoyable.
Out of all of the Final Fantasy games that I've played, this one has the worst characters and story. My main problem with other FF games was that the story was too convoluted. Here, it's almost nonexistent. There's no clear objective most of the time and no real clue as to what drives most of the characters. When events like Penelope getting captured by bounty hunters moves along the story, the story is getting sidetracked. There's also too little character development. This is probably the first time that I finished a FF game without caring about the characters.
The combat system is decent, but nothing to special. It's just like a 3D version of the system from 2D FF games. It doesn't have the same amount of 3D strategy as the reach sphere from Vagrant Story.
Lastly, there's way too much useless traveling in this game. Running through cities, deserts, and forest to reach the same place over and over again is irritating. When I want to buy a sword, I shouldn't have to run for 2 minutes to get to a shop. More teleports, like in Oblivion, would have let me focus on the fun parts of the game.
Overall, I would recommend that you play another FF game if you're looking for a great story. Watch online videos of the cutscenes if you want to see the great graphics, but I don't expect you to be impressed by the gameplay.