Gameplay-wise -- specifically, in terms of mechanics -- it seems as if Square took everything that was wrong with previous FF's and fixed it all. Not having to transition between battles and the field makes the game much, much, much more fun, as each battle passes in a matter of seconds rather than minutes. Even if most battles are practically the same, when you're blowing through them this fast, it remains fun.

The gambit system allows you to automate your characters' actions. Some people argue that this takes away all the fun of the game because you just end up watching your characters fight instead of controlling them. I completely disagree. What the gambit system does is allow you to automate the boring, monotonous tasks that were never fun to do in the first place. You still have to play the part of manager, giving high-level directions (i.e. the fun part). Also, personally, I love setting things up ahead of time and then seeing my plans work in practice (which explains why I love programming). At one point in the game, I found myself cackling like a madman when I found a combination of skills and gambits which allowed me to cast blizzaga (or any other level-3 elemental spell) for a net profit in MP. All of the sudden I was running around blowing away everything I saw with magic. It was beautiful.

The mechanics are so good that they manage to be fun despite what seems like a concentrated effort by the designers to ruin them. Seriously: there are a few things that are slightly annoying about the engine, and it seems like the designers (that is, the people who create the content, as opposed to the people who invented the mechanics) decided to shove these annoyances in your face intentionally as if they presented some sort of challenge. For example, in order to fight flying monsters, you have to un-equip your conventional weapons (e.g. swords) and switch to ranged weapons (e.g. bows and arrows). So, whenever you see a flying monster, you have to spend 10 seconds dinking around in the menu, fight it, then spend another 10 seconds switching back. Of course, in previous FF's, dinking around in the menu between battles was commonplace since you had to heal yourself (in FFXII, you set up gambits to do that automatically), so the fact that I'm complaining about having to enter the menu at all is actually a testament to the improved gameplay mechanics. But, nevertheless, it is annoying.

And then there are puzzels. I feel like I need to take my essay on good puzzles vs. bad puzzles and mail it to every major game developer. Fortunately, FFXII doesn't have very many puzzles, because practically every puzzle that it has is a very bad puzzle. The FFXII designers absolutely love to stick you in a situation where you have to do something unintuitive and then not give you any hints whatsoever about what to do. In one situation, you are hunting a monster, but when you show up to the place where it is supposed to be, a guy who is waiting for you says "It's not here!"... and it turns out you are supposed to walk in and out of the area repeatedly until it appears. In another situation, there is a monster which is said to be "shy"... it turns out you have to stand completely still for several minutes to make it come out. I only discovered these facts by reading FAQs, because there were no in-game hints. WTF?

But, again, a few ridiculous puzzles is pretty standard for FF games. Given that the gameplay -- traditionally the worst part of any FF -- was so much improved in FFXII, you'd expect that the game would be a hit overall, right?

Well, like I said, it was fun, because the gameplay was fun. But normally what I love about FF games is the story. Sadly, FFXII's story was... lacking. The cutscenes were short and sparse, with the vast majority of time being devoted to continuous dungeon crawling. Worse yet, the kind of RPG story I love most is an emotional one, and FFXII has none of that. Sure, there were some interesting themes and symbolism in the plot, but interesting themes don't make me cry.

As I mentioned above, the game seemed much shorter than it really was. I think there are two reasons for this:

• The story was sparse. The story alone really was much shorter than other RPGs. Especially compared to something like Xenogears, where maybe 30-40% of the game time was spent on pure story development.

• With most RPGs, the gameplay sucks so much that I commonly find myself longing for an area to end. With FFXII, I rarely felt that way, so it went by faster.

Frankly I'm a little relieved that it is finally over, and I can start on other games that have been piling up. 70 hours is way too long for a single game. I'm pretty sure this is the longest total play time I have ever spent on a single-player game. But, I'm glad I played it. I think I can safely add this to my personal video game Hall of Fame just for the amazing engineering. But it doesn't come anywhere near Xenogears for story.