Most controversial FF game.
The graphics are amazing. I give then full marks. The audio is also pretty good. The story is average.
Now onto the bad points:
Gameplay: Let's talk gambits. Some love it, some hate it. I hated it. What the hell is the point of gambits? I don't want to spend time configuring characters to automatically perform tasks. I want to tell them what to do every step of the battle. The game makes this very hard. Gambits also make the game BORING. You just run up to an enemy and just sit there waiting for you party to kill it. Yes, that is really fun. NOT.
Difficulty: Something really got screwed up here. You can work your way through the enemies on the map with ease and then as soon as you get to boss, the dificulty jumps 100x. It is just ridiculous. Do the developers expect me to run around wasting hours of my life to level up?
Soundtrack: An absolute disgrace to the Final Fantasy name. I would like to see them bring out a Piano Collections for this one. The music was not unique and did not fit the scenes very well. If you hear a piece of music from any other FF game you will instantly know what scene it fits in the game. Not for this game.
Characters: How plain and boring can you get? You learn little to nothing about the main character Vaan and some of the other characters were just pointless (Penelo). I found it hard to give a damn about any of the characters unlike other FF games. There is NO character development. The only characters with some charm/uniqueness are Balthier and Basche.
License board: Just stupid. What is the point in having different characters if you can make them all the same? Also why the hell shoud i have to learn a new license to equip new armour/weapons. It is just a crap idea.
To be honest the only thing making me want to carry on playing was to get to the next cut scene and see how the story unfolded. Gameplay was boring for me and boss battles were hard and tedious.
Definately rent it before you buy it!
And yes, 4/10 does seem like a harsh score when you think of all the hard work that has been put in to the game. But in the end i really didn't enjoy playing it, so imo it deserves that score.
Review from a Final Fantasy fan.