Originally Posted by
Ouch!
As far as their function in battle, Espers were an incredible failure. That's indisputable. Their usefulness was exceedingly limited, and because of the system described above, the MP they used could be put to infinitely more effective manners of defeating enemies.
That aside, I felt that the Espers in FFXII were among the most interesting to appear in any game in the series. Their history revealed in the bestiary entries was really interesting. I generally found the back story of Ivalice far more interesting than the actual story of FFXII, and the Espers were a good part of this. It was also nice to see a deviation from the staple summons of the series. A little break from the norm is nice every so often.