so. three hours into it. heres my thoughts
I am taking my time with it btw lol.
Starts off slow in terms of battling, its just use the a/x button the whole time because you have nothing else you can play with. At the 2.5hr mark you finally earn the paradigm shifts and your skill grid so you can start learning new spells and you have many many options during battle.
The paradigm shifts are pretty cool, its how you control the other characters in battle, There are lots of possibilities with this, you can also customize and create new ones. What these do is set how your characters play, ex. healer/attacker/magic/defense. you can change these on the fly in the battle which is something you need to do pending the situations.
There is no way you would be able to control the whole team due to the way the battles take place, so controlling one is not a let down at least to me. The battles keep you paying attention mostly, there is an auto button but you can change this so its not your default command (meaning on top of command list). The way the atb works is very well in my opinion, I like it a lot.
The story so far is piecing together slowly but surely, many cutscenes which can be skipped and paused. The graphics are amazing for the 360, I havent seen a game look this good on the system. I like the way the story is going so far, and yes it feels like a final fantasy game, I don't understand why they said it doesnt when there isnt one ff that had anything to do with the last.
overal I am very happy so far, three discs on xbox, I think one for ps3, so should be big, I know its at minimum like 25 hours. but like I said, im very pleased, I think the step forward was definitely in the right direction.
and character customization is there definitely, the skill grid can go whichever way you want it to pending your paradigm shift, so theres times you wont use part of the grid, because your character might not be a healer. all the same in terms of equipment and bangles and such as well.
Again, my opinions, I say check it out