While I have no way to find out where it is true or not, I've always thought the poor impression left upon many fans by XII is a byproduct of overusing faqs/guides/tricks like these. Overpowered characters combined with gambits are building block of the auto-play for which FFXII was lambasted. 

It had a lame story with crappy characters.

That said, its gameplay was second to none, and most people who criticize it, never really understood, or beat the game. They got about 20-30 hours in and thought "this game isn't for me." Never understood how to actually play the game from the beginning. I had 30 hours in the game before I finished the first quest. It had an AMAZING battle system, and the complexity/difficulty were only for hardcore jrpgers. That's why people hate it. I, personally, gave it a 9/10.

Maybe I'm the one who doesn't know what he's talking about. 120 hours in my third playthrough.

FF12 was pretty good, the gameplay was awsome, but the story sucked

While Vaan and Penelo lacked something in the way of character development (Penelo definitely felt like she was thrown in), Vaan was there to offer a point of view of the main storyline of the game. All other characters had certain points of their past revealed in the game, so I don't see how they had some aspect of characterization.

Gambits were completely optional and anyone complaining about them has moot points, to be honest. I loved the Gambit system because of the monotony of grinding in the game. Also, it was awesome to actually set up the AI of your other two party members, rather than depend on general AI set-ups where they almost always screw something up somewhere along the line.

Of course, the best aspect of the game is the gameplay (hell, I put around 300 hours into the game). It was a fresh change from past FFs, which is something the series needed. There are few games that make me WANT to play through it three times in a row (regular playthrough, power playthrough and then a Vaan solo one), so that says something about it.

Also, people complaining about the lack of a "love" component need to look closer. There were some elements of it in the story, but it wasn't forced down the players' throats like it was in FFX. That was one of the things I hated about FFX; the love story was so prevalent and sickening, it made me not care about Yuna/Tidus.

It's an RPG. Are you seriously telling me not to level up in an RPG? I had a hard enough time putting up with that nonsense in FF8, I'm not doing that again in FF12 when leveling up clearly does do something.

Leveling up doesn't do as much in FF12 as you might think. Equipment and licenses are far more important than anything else, as pointed out in the various challenges people impose on themselves when they play.

The problem with FFXII was that it tried to do too much.

You could write a paper around all the things that went wrong with its developments, but let's look at the main points.

First off, the story and characters changed multiple times in development. Basch went from being the main character to having almost no point in the game aside from his initial plot trigger. Instead we got Vaan, a character who basically travels through the game and we see the game 'through his eyes'. This would be a welcome addition to the Final Fantasy world, except its been done already with FFX. And in both cases, it wasn't done well. Because you were placed in the role of a proverbial 'every day joe' who actually turned out to be a rather ignorant douche. And in FFXII, he doesn't even have the excuse Tidus had.

But beyond this, the biggest faults in FFXII is that it doesn't hold your attention. Initially, the thought of having hundreds of NPCs to interact with in towns and HUGE areas to explore is a RPG players wet dream. However, when attempted in FFXII...it just became a chore. Running around talking to everyone in town took ages and became work. And fighting outside of town, even on the main game path, felt repetitive and areas could take hours to complete. Part of the whole 'MMO' gameplay style.

In the end, the game was too large for its own good, with too many ideas attempted. It needed some more balance. Something its counterpart in Dragon Quest VIII did much better. Dragon Quest VIII did all the same things. A vast world to explore, tons of NPCs to interact with in town, tons of extra stuff to do outside of the main game, etc. However, it balanced it all out so it didn't get tossed all at you near the end of the game (hunts) and it didn't feel like a chore.