The story had way too many characters, and kind of had me a bit lost to tell the truth, it wasn't as focused as others, and there wasn't really any 'love' theme in there. Admittedly I too have a short attention span. I don't want to be bored with the story, I know they tried to make it have a lot of detail, but it kind of shows how far behind videogame blockbusters can be from Hollywood as far as capturing a Western audience with the story. It seems a very tough thing to do in a video game, when you have to balance game play with story, as well as the fact that the story has to drag on to match the game length people are looking for in an RPG. Drag on is seemingly what it did.
The story was ok, just not as good as the other good games in the series. All the characters coming a long for most of the story seemed very cliche to me and kind of ruined it for me. I understand the reason they did that is so you could chose who you play with, but you shouldn't sacrifice the story for that- i'd rather had a more engaging story than more options to whom i play with. All the cg airship battles (action scenes), did nothing for me, seemed tacked on and all the same; they really overdid it in that aspect, you knew what was going to happen- I got sick of watching them at the end of the game.
The gameplay mechanics, production values, graphics, music were all outstanding. I know i definitely prefer the real-time system they used, it made the boss battles a lot more fun. I certainly prefer the MMO feel, possibly because i played FFXI for several years and loved it. Level grinding in other games can really get to you with the sheer amount of time it takes, it kind of streamlined the whole experience not having to pause for each battle.
It's still one of the best JRPGs out there, despite it's failure to live up to expectations.
