I liked the main playable characters for the most part. In the beginning I really liked Lightning and Sazh. In the end I liked Hope and Fang, mostly because they had the most 'development' (I hate using that word because it's been used so much to describe the characters in this game that it has lost all meaning, but there it is). Barthandelus was also a decent villain for the screentime he had.

I liked the battles in that they were fast paced and innovative. The sytem clearly put strategy at the forefront and that made for some challenging battles. The boss battles were definitely more challenging than most other FF games.

The graphics were beautiful. Gran Pulse was absolutely stunning. I really loved the wide open area of Gran Pulse. I wished there were more areas like that in the game.

I liked that each character had only a few select roles they could play in battle and access to the other roles only came late in the game. I like it when the characters have defined roles.