Lets begin:

Right off the bat, lets address the elephant in the room: Vaan's very existance.
I see no point in this little *vulgar insult* even being in this game. He's just there to introduce the gamers to the world, and he's the world map marker. He's literally interchangable with everything. He could have been a moving chair and the purpose would have been served. He's there to let you know where you are in relation to the rest of the world. That's it. He's dialogue is throw away, his story is concluded in the intro (Save Penelo), and even he, later, admits that he's pointless. Good job Executive Meddling, for removing Balthier from the actual MC role, and subverting him to just saying he is, while doing all the heroics. I love watching *someone else* do all the cool shit, while I sit baby sitting this nasely little bastard.

So, with that out of the way, there should be no confusion on my stance on Vaan.

I hate him.

Moving on:
The story cutscenes in these games confound me. It's like someone decided to jump on the bandwagon that it was cool to have 50 cutaways in a span of 5 seconds. One moment people are talking to one another, and the next you have items literally popping into someone's hand. A solid example:
You (I use this term loosely for the group) are all handcuffed in some of the worse, and pathetic handcuffs ever seen, your hands are clearly strapped to the front of you. The scene cuts over to a facial expression, and back to the same exact spot on Vaan's hands, only for the macguffin plot device to magically be there. I mean, really?

So moving on from that, the other thing that irritated me in the cutscenes happened to be the voice acting. Everyone in this game can't figure out what accent to use. Except Vaan and Balthier. They stay consistant. Vaan is consistantly nail-on-chalkboard while Balthier keeps almost making me a believer that this game doesn't completely blow. Everyone else bounces between old english, modern english, and some hybrid combination of the two.
Panelo and Fran are the absolute worse offenders of this. Panelo has even less of a personality then Samus in Metroid: Other M, and Fran sounds like this was her first job, phoned it in, and couldn't figure out if Fran was super intelligent, or had the IQ of a caveman based on how well her English is structured. This annoys me because Fran is easily the 2nd most important person in this game. While Technically Ashe is suppose to be “The most important”, she doesn't do shit for the story outside of being emo about wanting revenge or not, which leave it to either Balthier: The guy who always has a plan and saves everyone's bacon countless times, or Fran: The walking lorebook with a tight ass.

Next, I was going to complain about how one works with a summon. I don't agree with the sentiment that “Party kills big monster. Monster now summonable to group”, which defaulted into “he who PURCHASES THE FUCKING LICENSE get to summon mini-god”. (Mini note: I found summons useless. I used them 5 times. 4 of them was in combat where the entire enemy timed auto aimed at my summoner, dispelling the entire thing instantly. 1 was because the story forces you to)
This entire concept is dumb to me, but then I realized this just fits nicely into the point that bothered me more than anything: The License Board.

The entire board is dumb. I don't mean that in a fickle “you don't like customization stuff”. To flavor this out a bit: Ever play FFX? I liked the Sphere Grid. It was fun in an irritating sort of way. Not that it was bad, but because I had a strong urge to fill that bastard out, which lead to countless hours grinding.
This license board is just dumb. Not only can you easily get any item on any part of the license board at any point of time (thus nullifying it's entire point), but it's possible to do so in a very short amount of time with very minimal grinding. Really, they should have just said “Pick a class. Your abilities will come to you with levels. Like every other FF game”. The way the License Board pans out is just completely pointless.

Which also leads me to my other large gripe: The Gambit System.

inal Fantasy 12 is easily the second most boring game I've ever seen played for me.
(The first is facebook games, if you were curious)
I think I actually had to take control around 3 times the entire time I played the game, because the AI kept hitting the wrong enemy.
“But Joker, why did you intentionally break the game?!”
I didn't. My two white mages had Shell, Protect, and Esuna set to auto cast like any intelligent person. I never died after that in a fair setting. More on fair settings later. Maybe.

Between the Voice Acting, Macguffin screen cuts, voice acting, and boring combat, there had to be something I liked, right? What about the story?

What about the story?
… About the story?
… The story?
… Story?
...
… What story?

Seriously, I still don't know what the hell the story is. The entire time I watched the cutscenes, they were force feeding some new person down my throat as if I knew who the hell they were.
I actually felt like I started watching a show in the middle of season 6. What the hell type of story telling is that?
“Playing” this game reminded me of the story telling involved in Type-0. And by story telling I mean moving pictures with audio, because that was about as coherent as that mess was.
“Common Joker, be serious”

Kay, how about this:
Some dude killed a king, a prince, and a soldier. King's Daughter, Prince's Wife, Soldier's brother, and Mad Scientist' son all hate everything and want revenge. Soldier's friends quit being soldiers, decide all out war is best because of a magical stone that no one can fucking use, over some artificially created Stone/Grenade that has the power of a nuke they can channel into summoning demons. From there you find out half the people who are competent are judges, were judges, or invovled with judges, all the while the cut scenes are trying to dramatically cut away as people you never even seen before die in forced ways.

Oh, and Ashe is the plot point. Because reasons. The only person in this game that had anything even remotely close to a decent character was Balthier, and his story was actually somewhat interesting. He didn't dwell on things, had a plan, and was actually smart. Oh, and there are a LOT of betrayals. Like they forgot how to actually craft a story.

(Side note: This $50 game fails miserably at lip syncing)

Later on in the game, you run across another plot point (shortly after the handcuffed scene, mind you) for reaons unexplained, Viera (or just Fran?) go nutso berserk if there's too much “Mist”, something else that isn't really explained. They try to explain the Mist as caused by the Stones, yet in the same breath talk about how Mist was there before the Stones, or some hogwash. I actually fell asleep during these scenes quite a few times.

Moving on from the random rage burst from the sexy bunny girl, we see our team fly off into the sunset, as the entire fortress they were on explosed, to show the stone they had magically floating there.
If you couldn't tell, they retrieve it somehow.

At this point I had to take a moment to break, because if I had to listen to another person go from a standard normal accent, to old English, then immediately into some ancient poem that they feel they must recite, I would have put my controller through the screen.

With my break done, I sat down, only for the game to immediately go into Narration mode, where I was treated to a wall of text and some old dude telling me what was happening. This happens exactly one more time after this, later on.
So with that done, we entre the area of “Talking too much”, where the middle of the game seems to be filled with people who can just say “Lets go to the dungeon and get the loot”. Instead every single person actually expands their simple lines into at least 14 additional time-padded exposited lines that were actually pissing me off.

“Least not shall we enforce our own wills upon those that need not suffer to their fullest?!”
(Translate: Lets not force our agenda, mmkay?)

“Mayhaps the stones provide the resting grounds to the the dungeons far beyond the call of the wills devoid of the souls of those that created those powerful signets, that all that behests must bow to in utter respect of thine linage”
(Translation: You're royalty, so people respect the god-made stone, which is also your emblem.)

I get it, FF12, you're edgy. Put down Shakespeare.

So moving through the game, I came to a slew of new issues that did not seem present in the first half of this game: Difficulty spikes.

If anyone ever tells you that Nightshade Tomatoes are no big deal, punch them.
Punch them until every one of their teeth fall out. And then keep punching until you get tired.
If you've played the game, you should know the irritation well.
If not, just feel blessed you don't have to deal with these status effect whores.

So we have Difficulty spikes, Save Crystal Mimics (nearly broke my controller on this one), worthless summons, and the coup de grace out of all of them: if you have ANY partical effects on you, via haste, shell, or some kind of action in your direction, you cannot open doors, chests, or even flip that person out of your party. It brought me back to the time when Noctic would jump infront of every door.

Side notes: Invisible Traps that insta kill you suck, and the final boss was so goddamn boring, I fell asleep during phase 1, and woke up after phase 2 was ended. I have no idea what happened bewteen, nor do I have the urge to find out. All I know is my gambits are too powerful.

I think I ranted long enough.

TL;DR – This game sucks, and the official game reviewers who have a hard on for it are dumb.

I appreciate this, as the game is really rather......eugh.
I spent $50 and I wanted a decent experience. I got that.....for half the game. I got to Ahriman, the doom casting esper, and the doom doesn't piss me off. It's the fact that despite never running from battle, never skipping out on a fight, I am still.......underleveled. I grinded, underleveled. Call me casual if you want. But he is right, I don't want to backtrack and murder endless things because the game has that fucking 5 mandragora boss before another. Im out of hi potions, im out of Phoenix down, and im out of patience. This game pisses me off. Because no matter how I tackle it, it feels wrong. I got ip to Ahriman TWICE. it was still fucking stilted and anybody just gets ganged before I can do anything.