I didn't like it as much as previous FF's. Though it still is a good game. To me the decline of FF started with XII, with XV coming as an action-rpg i think i'm done with supporting FF as a series.

Then you let me guessing that you need to play the game more than once to understand its story because I can't understand how it is confusing unless you don't pay attention. 

I do find people hating this and possibly IX too mostly due to these releases being late on their systems. People seems to be affraid of what is "old".

Fire Emblem: Path of Radience is a SRPG, which is not that different to FFXII, which is a RPG that has elements of SRPGs and MMORPGs.

Also, your definition of grinding is wrong. Grinding is the act of constantly getting into battles so you can level up, acquire money, get rare item drops, etc. It has nothing to do with a desire for story progression.

Actually, Xenoblade was made by the same staff that made Xenogears and Chrono Cross.  Only a small amount of them worked on the FF series and the titles they worked on were FFIV, FFV, and FFVI.

I've read many books. However, I judge FFXII for its narrative as a video game. Games are not movies or novels, and they should take their own unique approach to narrative, even when the story is linear and non-branching. FFXII did an amazing job. The way the story is paced and constructed in conjuction with gameplay, is on par with the best stories of other mediums, including Shakespeare.

Vaan is probably the best written protagonist in the FF series. If it wasn't for him, I probably wouldn't like FFXII as much as I do today. When you find out the true purpose of his role, you'll appreciate his character and the script of FFXII much more.

Trust me, the script and the impact of the game wouldn't have been the same had anybody but Vaan been the POV to the story. Matsuno knew what he was doing when he chose Vaan to be the POV to this political tale. Also, Vaan is not far removed from the plot. In contrary, he's very deep rooted to it. He's the means by which the entire cast comes together.

As for character intercation, why pick on FFXII? Sure, Basch and Fran never had a conversation, but neither did Kimahri and Rikku in FFX. Heck, even Auron and Rikku didn't have a deep convo. FFX is guilty of weak charcater interaction just as much as FFXII is, yet people claim it was the last good FF story. Double standards, much?

For me, the last great FF was FFXII. Even FFXI was a success, despite being a MMORPG. It's FFXIII that really damaged the brand in both critical acclaim (first mainline FF to not get a Metascore over 90) and fanbase reception (has more haters than FFXII).

That is exactly it.

Evil twins, not-really-dead royalty, emperor's murdered by his son the pretend-to-be-good-guy(but is obviously the bad guy), the bad guy's little brother (incognito! also obvious), how many awful, painfully obvious cliches can one story hold? There's nothing good about that. I don't understand how people defend that.

Vaan isn't a strong enough character to bring the cast together and be a main protagonist. He's not that far removed from the blank slate that WRPGs usually employ, but those games compensate for that by giving players choices in the story. It's a weak excuse for including Vaan as the main protagonist. As a side character he could fulfill the same role whilst making room for a protagonist with a greater investment in the plot to draw the player into the story. Instead, he's just a weak protagonist that ticks all the stylistic boxes whilst having little to no relevance to the plot. The fact that he needs such a weak excuse of "he brings the entire cast together" reinforces my point that he has no genuine relevance to the plot. Any of the chracters could have fulfilled that role with a very small amount of rewriting and without singificantly changing their character.

As for character interaction, I'm fairly sure I remember Rikku having a conversation with everyone at some point. Not 100% sure as it's been a while but I have vague recollections of a number of general party conversations. Not so much in XII.

As for X I'd argue that X has a fairly simple plot at its core with some familiar concepts (e.g. corrupt religious leaders), but more importantly, the storytelling is stronger. Frequent storytelling/character developing cut-scenes, protagonists that are central to the plot and no "filler" characters. Yuna fulfilled the role of bringing the cast together and was central to the plot. She falls for Tidus which gives the player an easy concept to emotionally invest themselves in. It makes people care about the characters even though at its core, it's a more basic storyline when compared to XII.

In practice it was impossible to go almost anywhere in the beginning. The game became truly open world only when the end was coming closer, and even FFX did that. Funny how you call FFXIII a past FF game, by the way. And yes, the story was slowly paced. That's exactly what it is when the story is so simple with relatively little development yet the game takes a good 40 to 50 hours on the first playthrough. Not only that, the gameplay sections between story events didn't do anything to reinforce the story. Generally I felt completely detached from the story whenever I wasn't watching a cutscene because for the most part, gameplay consisted of going from A to B with a huge horde of enemies between - and it really felt like that. I liked the battle system, mind you, but most gameplay sections felt so detached from the story.

It's funny how the game wasn't designed so you can get everything, yet you could get absolutely everything if you just played through all content there was. I don't care how they intended it to be but they made it seem like everything was made to be obtainable and that's what counts.

And one question: What do you makes an interesting character? I find it hard to discuss about characters when you talk about interesting but I don't really have any idea what that means to you.

If my definition is "exactly it" then your claim that the game has too much grinding in order to progress the story is an invalid criticism.

There were no evil twins,  though. Not everybody believed Ashe was dead, as she had a sizeable resistance that knew who she was. The emperor was poisoned, but it was unique in that he wasn't killed out of malice, but rather out of necessity. Vayne was a not a villain, but just did extreme things to achieve his goals. Larsa was only icognito for a small section of the game. That said, so was Ashe when she called herself Amalia. Also, there was nothing cliche about Larsa being Vayne's younger brother. In summary, all your complaints about the "painfully obvious cliches" are garbage. Past FF games have done far more cliches.

I disgaree that Vaan needs to have the entire story revolve around him in order for him to be a good protagonist. You're basically feeding off a JRPG stereotype of how the main character must be vital and intergral to every aspect of the plot. FFXII doesn't obey that rule and it's much better as a reult.

As for character interaction in FFX, there was more of it compared to FFXII, but there were still charcaters that barely spoke. I paid keen attention to this when I played FFX in january this year. Seriously, nobody even had a deep conversation with Kimahri. He was just standing there doing noothing for the most part. He only came alive when a fight was about to break out.

LOL! You are seriously trying to compare the open map design of FFXII to the linear pathways of FFX? Seriously? You couldn't be more wrong, bro. FFX doesn't come close to the openess of the world of FFXII. It's not even in the same league. Also, I've played through FFXII over 11 times (currently on my 12th playthrough) and I can comfortably tell you that you can get to certain areas long, long, long before the story dictates you should go there. The game is very unrestricted in terms of exploration. It only restricts a few locations, while everywhere else is possible to be reached. FFX just gave you an airship to revist locations right before you faced the last boss. That's nothing like the freedom that FFXII offered.

Also, the story was not slowly paced. Stop riding on preconceptions on what the ideal pacing of a story should be. That's you downfall when critcising FFXII. As a video game, there's no rule on how fast or slow a story should be portrayed. What's most important is the gameplay and how that's paced. FFXII has fantastic gameplay pacing. You will travel to loads of areas and have long stretches of gameplay between story. As a video game, that's a good thing. Wanting more cinematics for the sake of story is simply you desiring FFXII to have been an interactive movie.

As I said before, they did not design eveything to be obtainable. They deliberately made it so it would be almost impossible to get 100% completion. For example, the only way to get the Zodiac Spear is by using a RNG exploit. If you don't use the RNG method and try and get the weapon in a legit way, there's a crazy low rate of getting it. It's a 1/100 chance of the chest that holds it appearing, and then a 1/1000 chance of it actually being in the chest. Good luck trying to get the weapon  legitametly.

Lastly, what makes a character interesting to me? Not much. The most important aspects are their dialogue, beliefs, and goals. I don't give a shit about extensive backstory and extensive character development.  This is not a novel. Just give me a character that has great dialogue, an intriguing belief, and a goal they want to achieve by the end of the game. That's enough for me to be engaged by them during our journey through the game. After all, Link is my fave video game character and he has very little back story or character development in any of the Zelda games he's been in. Heck, he doesn't even talk! LOL!

@galvanizer Wow... that made no sense. But i see its not worth arguing.

It only doesn't make sense becomes it effectively rebukes your claim that FFXII has too much grinding in order to progress with the story. Grinding exists in RPGs for leveling up and stat growth, not for acting as a bridge between story scenes. If there's too much grinding between cinematics for your liking, that isn't a flaw. It simply means you want less gameplay between cinematics. That's a subjective stance and merely a personal opinion. FFXII is not flawed just because it didn't cater to your specific demands.