Why a lot of fans don't like this game *SPOILERS*

[Egami]

I too felt that the pacing of the game, as far as it's story goes, is not its strongest point. That is very much it's weakness, the flow of the story is bogged down by the large amount of exploring/fighting that one has to do between the different scenes. It is not that the story is weak or uninteresting; it is that it is spread too thin. The game could have been a bit more balanced in that regard. When compared to the pacing of other FFs like VII and X, the pacing of this game feels quite slow and as a consequence, as others have already pointed out, people tend to forget why they are going to wherever it is they are headed.

As far as the locations go, I think that what happens in XII is not that it lacks interesting locations, of these there are many: The Feywood, Giruvegan, The Pharos, Eruyt, Bur-Omisace, Sochen Cave Palace, The Stilshrine of Miram, etc. What happens is that just like the story, they are spread too thin and you must first go through a lot of areas like beaches, forests and wastelands, which don’t have much of a distinctive feature before you get to them. As far as the different cities goes, I found these to be quite interesting and lively, begging you to explore and interact with everything around you. The floating city of Bhujerba in particular reminded me of Zeal’s Palace in Chrono Trigger.