Long time Final Fantasy fans may be disappointed in what I would call a lack of depth for this installment.
If this game were not bearing the Final Fantasy name, I have no doubt that it would be considered a fine RPG on its own, but it bears a name that is synonymous with quality in the RPG gaming world. So pervasive that it has its own culture. And of course there are players like me that get upset when the brand messes with tradition.
First off, this game is really short. Comparing to previous games, you blow through this storyline like you've got a deadline and you're left with a "shouldn't there be more?" kind of feeling. The characters also feel slightly rushed, in terms of their development. Exploring Cloud's past from FF7 takes about 60 hours, whereas in this game the characters go through rapid transformations. I'm guessing that Square Enix feels that with enhanced graphics they can portray events and emotions much more realistically and convey the character's growth through that, but there really just wasn't enough to these characters. They're dynamic, but it feels a little faux. And beyond that, I kind of hated every character in the game. None of them were really likable at all.
The biggest problems I still have are (1) with the combat changes they've been making and (2) the main theme. Square Enix was SO excited to get rid of random battles, but the result is that you feel like you're playing an MMO. Heads up, this is a not superior combat system. The other thing problem is that they're really trying too hard to make combat more complex and oftentimes they end up making it too complex. To make up for this, you have to customize your AIs. I'm not sure how everyone else feels about this, but I hate relying on a computer to input the commands. Yet combat is too fast in this game to do otherwise. In short, combat system is flawed in many ways, just describing the one that irks me the most above.
Issue 2 is that this game, like it's recent predecessor has moved it's theme from the extremely human emotion of love over to cold politics. The story in previous final fantasy games often revolved around one main character who usually had some sort of crush on one of the other characters and that was a big catalyst for a lot that happened. Cloud went for revenge over what happened to Aeris and I seem to remember Zidane throwing himself into the battle to save a kingdom for the princess he accidentally fell for. The point is that those games did have politics to make the story more complex and interesting, but one of the most powerful emotions a human can feel is love and that was culled from the series just when the graphics got good enough to make it easier to pull people's heartstrings. I hoped that with the disaster that was XII they would realize that people can emphasize with the main character more by using base emotions to move the story along, but it looks like they're sticking with "multiple main characters/detached storyline" plots. It's disappointing.
Edited because the score was accidentally set too high.