I was pretty addicted before I beat the game. I do plan to go back and try completing some of the optional stuff. I guess the fact that I beat the game in only a few days shows how addicted I was.

The battle system was pretty addicting, and I just enjoyed working on completing the side quests so I could see more stories about the people inhabiting the world. A lot of them weren't too terribly interesting, but some were fantastic as well.

As for things I wish would have been different, most of my issues involved the story and writing. I won't go into that for spoiler reasons, but the premise behind the world in this game is pretty fascinating. I just didn't think it was always handled the best. Gameplay-wise, I do think a dodge roll would have been nice. There is one move that has you can sort of use to backflip away from attacks if I remember right. Dodge rolling might have made things a bit too easy though considering the way battles put an emphasis on timing your guards and attacks. It would have been a nice way to move around your enemies more quickly though considering Lightning just kind of slowly walks in battle. I also would have liked to see more done with targeting parts of enemies to exploit weaknesses and stagger them. It was handled pretty well, but I remember when it was originally mentioned as a battle mechanic I thought you could do things like specifically target an enemy's legs or something. It could have added a little more variety to battle as you try to figure out the weaknesses of an enemy that way.