Well, you were blown away by 10, so your taste in Final Fantasy games is somewhat lacking flavor. It appears you like boring games that are predictable, and have bad voice acting, and characters with no emotion.
Let me guess. FFVII was utter garbage in your eyes right?
Ichimonji is right. Final Fantasy has been breaking the mold for EVERY RPG that has been made. And it's constantly upgrading from the previous game.
Oh no they changed the appearance of something.
"Hey Square! Why doesn't Shiva look the same from IV as she does in X? Way to screw that up jackasses!"
I'm surprised you didn't say anything about the Espers (Which although are useless later in the game, are a great change from the typical same-ol' we see from every FF game).
The chocobos are meant to be heavy armed, because the timeline in this game, if you even played far enough, because you did rent it, is set in a war torn world. And if you look at it that way, the other Final Fantasy games have it wrong, now don't they? The trusty "steed" without any protection?
A Star Wars & LoTR cross? I love how you say that but prove no points in the similarities between the movies & game. Or is it cause "They have ships that can fly, and they use swords, and bows & arrows & stuff?"
Your turn based, more realistic battles when the entire thing is paused waiting for you to make your choice.
And your lack of comments on the gambit system makes me think that you didn't get far at all, or else you would have ripped into that.
Turn on active mode, instead of wait, then you get a better feel for, what I think, to be a very innovative and creative battle system, that I hope sticks around with the rest of the Final Fantasy games, because it's a whole hell of a lot less boring then sitting there & selecting whatever you want to do each round.
I can safely assume that you didn't play far enough into the game to appreciate it's value, and as to what Square was trying to do.
You can go back to playing your "amazing" FFX.