I kind of see what you mean. But there is a certain difference in how we treat XII and IX - you like IX a lot despite a certain thing from your checklist not being there. Ergo, you recognize it as a flaw. For me, on the other hand, the fact that the cast of XII doesn't interact with each other much isn't a flaw as much as it is a feature that is part of the unique FFXII experience. Like, would it make many people happier if this were changed? Absolutely. Do I feel that it needs to be changed in order to make it a better game? Absolutely not.

I don't know if I'm making much sense with this thread honestly. I can't keep up with myself sometimes XD I guess what I mean is that I don't think there's an objective way to gauge a game's quality, but the consensus seems to be that people are looking for those objective indicators. But there's also nothing wrong if you do keep an individual checklist - as long as you keep yourself open to other options, I think!