Great gameplay but the story was too ambiguous and the UI needs major work.
The battle system is adds a lot of depth to the game, but there was no in-game tutorial to introduce players to it. I had to read lots of guides to fully grasp the extent of the system. But once I did, I really enjoyed the chain attacks, targeting, affinity, and everything else.
The forging system also sweet but the small inventory size prevents you from really using it to create great items.
I'm not a big fan of Square (or SquareEnix's) storytelling methods. Except for FF7, they leave out way too many details. At the beginning, they didn't tell me enough about the parliament, the riskbreakers, or anything so I couldn't understand why Ashley was there. All the fights seemed like I was just doing a job (which was what Ashley was doing); there was no real interest for me to fight on. It wasn't until halfway (during the changed flashback) that I got interested in the story. Even at the end, there was too much left out. I still didn't know what the Darkness was, the Duke's purpose for selecting a successor, and even Ashley's true past wasn't cleared up.
The UI could also use a lot of work. Some menus have tons of options clumped into them while others were giant chains with a few options each.
Overall, it's a great game, but I don't think it's quite as good as it could be.