This is not a typical shooter. Those are typically FPS, First-Person Shooters. In this game you can switch to first person and the Sight Scope is pretty useful although you can't control the zoom, but mostly you'll be in 3rd-person. From the perspective of someone who has advanced skills in true FPS games (which I'm not), this game doesn't do much with the battle system. You can remodel and upgrade your guns and shoot explosive barrels and use three types of materia. That and the melee/Limit Breakers is about as innovative as the system gets.
Personally, I loved almost everything about it, I got the same impression out of it that I got out of FF7.