I keep looking at FFXII. I played a part of FFX, but found it mindnumbingly boring... cutscene, take two steps, random fight, cutscene. No dialog choices, no meaningfull character development as far as I could see, no choices. Just walk from cutscene to cutscene, wit annoying fights inbetween. I would have preferred it if they would have just left out the fighting and walking and made it a movie
But I keep hearing that FFXII is different, and so good. I might have to try it out then...
Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XII might as well have been made by different developers. There are almost no similarities between the two, other than the FF branding (and those pesky chocobos).
For one, there are almost no cut-scenes. Or, I should say, the cut-scenes are used in the way cut-scenes are used in PC RPGs: only at crucial moments in the plot to further the story or add scale. Be aware: that the game begins with a pretty lengthy cut-scene to get the ball rolling, but after that you will spend most of your time in full-blown exploration mode. In that way, the game has a lot more in common with Baldur's Gate or the Elder Scrolls than it does with Final Fantasy.
Also, no random encounters... none. As with CRPGs, if you see an enemy in the wilderness that you are not ready for or tired of fighting, simply walk past it. You'll want to fight some monsters in order to apply level-up points to skills, etc. and you'll soon get so addicted to the item drop system (in which killing multiple monsters of a similar type breeds better treasure) that you'll probably want to fight most of the time anyway.
The combat system is fantastic. In fact, and this is a fanboi term I almost never bring into respectable forums like this one, dare I say it is the work of genius. I can't describe too much of it, other than to say it is like KOTOR's system of queued up real-time pausable attacks only much, MUCH deeper. I've grown to love the combat sytsem in this game and it never stops getting more appealing. First, you figure out the gambits, then you figure out how to specialize certain characters as "trackers," "bow experts," "damage wizards," "time wizards," and so on. THEN, you start using the various Mist attacks, which have an interesting sort of slot machine mini-game built-in...
And best of all, the game reveals all this to you as you go, in one long extended tutorial. I don't think I even bothered to crack the game manual, though I have peeked at the hint guide a few times.
If you haven't already guessed, I highly recommend it. In fact, it is the first truly great RPG I've played in quite some time. It most definitely deserves its 93% rating on metacritic and then some.