Beat you to it Xarius, I got the game a few weeks ago!
About the interface, it's pretty good. You won't be playing it on the PS2 anytime soon since the problems with the EU hard-drive so I'll talk about the interface PC wise.

At first, I was gob-smacked at all those controls for the game and I thought I'd never get used to it. Of course, I was wrong as once I switched my controls to "Compact", I prefer w,s,a,d and i,j,k,l than the numeric keypad, there were little problems. The layout is pretty clean and everything is fairly simple, there's not much else to say on these terms.

Like Zaphier said, soloing is a nightmare and you feel that it's just a repetitive boring game, and drags on and on. That happend to me mainly due to my frustration of de-leveling thanks to Goblins but once you start partying, it becomes a whole new game, honest. Finding a party is pretty hard at first since there's only so many people to go around (of course that's going to increase soon thanks to people like you in good ol' Europe). Also, considering doing other things other than fighting like fishing and special events like the upcoming Summerfest, to give you a bit more variety.

Overall though, FFXI is another Square masterpiece, wonderful controls (although confusing at first) and smack-on gameplay creates a very sensual experience which even the all hailed "Everquest" will have a hard time keeping up with.