It had the best battle system. Now they are going back to boring turn-based combat in 13. *sigh*

weeee it's fun to Ctrl+F my name in random threads!

-edit-

And just so you know, I still think it's bullshit to expect to play a game for 15-20 hours before it gets interesting. 

Nice to see someone else agrees with me.

I think the battle system in FFXIII is going to look more like Xenogears though, which is one of Squaresoft's hidden gems from the PS1 era.

Another thing I hated about the game was that `summons` were garbage. one of the highlights of any FF game for me has always been the summons and the over the top spell effects. Unlocking a new summon was always much more gratifying than finding the next best rare piece of equipment. What a shame then that summons in FFXII are nothing more than eye candy that you will pull out once just to see what they look like and then never use them again.

Actually, there are a few FF in which Summons actually give you a real advantage in battles. In FFIV, FFV, FFVI summons were pretty much pointless to use in battles, especially in FFV and FFVI, since you got so many more options, which were less MP intensive for the same results. In FFVII, summons were pretty much pointless too, except for KOTR, which i never used too, even when battling Ruby and Emerald.
FFVIII pointless as well, albeit for the excellent junction and GF abilities, but in battles they weren't that useful, unless you worked a strategy around the extra HP they gave you when you summoned them, which in FFXII can work in the same fashion, using the espers as meat shields.
FFIX pointless, and you only begin using them from the middle of the 2 CD forward....
FFX had a good summon system with the Aeons, but once you've got most of the sphere grid unlocked, all other abilities would surpass summoning, plus only one character could do it, so it's a major downside.

My point is that, if you base your strategy solely on summons, then you're outlooking at so many other efficient layers of strategy that each FF game offers.

I could have told you - if you didn't like the first three hours, you weren't goig to lik the next fifty-seven either.

sometimes the battle system was boring.

It wasn't boring. Just when you needed to grind, like in any other RPG out there.

It was just so fun to find the perfect Gambit combination to finally make the game play by itself completely (that's at around 3/4 of the game you can achieve that). Anyone saying the game played by itself before you get Hastega and other great Status Effect Magicks doesn't know how it really looks like when done right.

My Gambits were so good, I could defeat that damn beast in the snow mountains (it was for the Guild thingy) at around level 5x after an hour without touching anything... and my guys did die every few attacks the beast did. It was painful to watch, trust me, but they did it! @_@

Ive been playing since 17 years, so its easy to play them all. You know with RPGs there is time that they dont release any for a while so you can play the one you missed. Before flaming me that I prolly got no life lol: I work 50 hours a week because im a sales manager and I also have a girlfriend :P.

Also im not a FF fan, im simply an RPG fan.

I think I loved FFXII because of its association with FF:Tactics. I haven't finished it yet (19 hours in) but so far I think if anyone can pull a complex story it is the team behind FF:Tactics (and Tactics Ogre).