Finishing a speed plot playthrough so I can go back and do it on hard-mode (I always try a new game on default/easier settings before I tackle the harder difficulties). There's a lot of good things in this game, though there are a couple frustrations.

First, the quests to unlock jobs. I don't mind the idea of doing quests to unlock jobs. It's a good idea, and some of the quests are awesome. But you have to be about halfway through the main story or more to unlock the most powerful ones. I don't mind waiting that long to train those classes, but it totally ruins your stat growth when you're stuck levelling as basic classes for the first 15 to 20 levels.

Then there's the law that is really annoying, "Don't harm the weak". You can't take any offensive actions against a lower level enemy. This law only shows up in missions where either you don't have to kill enemies to win, or you get an ally to help. Now, for the no kills to win, it doesn't matter much, but the ones with an ally suck. My characters were level 40 and the mark I had to kill was 25. So I spent a few turns healing the ally (who was a Green Mage and most unwilling to attack) until I decided to say "to hell with it" and unleashed an Ultima Masher on the boss (oddly, it seems that if the move that breaks the law also ends the mission, the mission ends before the laws are cancelled).

And finally, there's the quest that can only be completed through dispatch, that the game gives you the option of taking on without dispatching someone. If you take on all the quests yourself, you might spend a couple tries banging your head in frustration before you finally decide to dispatch someone to take it out. (SPOILER)You have 6 days to travel to 3 different areas and talk to 3 people in them. Unfortunately, the quest designers seemed to have overlooked that talking to the people takes up an extra day of time, so you wind up 2 days short no matter what.

(SPOILER)I agree with Roto that Vaan seemed to die sometime between XII and A2, and was replaced by a character with a personality (and an awesome one).

Also, Roto, have you tried doing single character battles to boost MVP? I know that Illusionists generally kill things too fast to get MVP status (4 attacks isn't usually enough to earn it), but when I let my Assassin Ultima Masher everything, she tends to get MVP fairly often. Statue is over halfway, and the first gem has appeared in it.