People seem to have all but forgotten about this game. For some reason I never got around to playing this one, but I gathered that the reviews were decent.
According to the FF Wiki it was originally a game unrelated to FFXII until Square decided to make it so:
It's been about 10 years since this game came out. So I was curious if anyone who played it would recommend it to a new player off the back of FFXII HD or if you otherwise have any fond memories of it.Although inheriting the Final Fantasy XII title, Yokoyama downplayed its link to its PlayStation 2 predecessor, saying—"It is not accurate to call this a sequel. We want people to view it as the latest FF game. This is not FFXII-2".