Please note before reading what follows that I don't dislike the game. However, it's not the FF I like best, either.

Why? In my opinion, it is the clear product of overwork.
The game has too much of everything. The costumes are too elaborated (and, in the case of females, too skimpy), the dungeons are too long, the sidequests too many, and too complicated, without an efficacious way to keep track of them all (except for Hunts), and so on.
The game itself is too long. Heck, I'm at almost 120 hours, and I'm nowhere near a solution of events! Am I ever going to see the end of it?
Everything is overdone. The game's got a lot of grandeur in it, and that's a good thing, but the developers seemed to forget that it also needs to catch - and hold - the attention of the player.
That could have been done with a solid plot and strong-minded characters, but it has not. Van is a stupid kiddo to say the least, and he's supposed to be the lead, but it clearly shows he was added in the cast just because people at SE were afraid not to sell enough without an androgynous blonde boy in the cast. Come on, could someone who is no longer twelve ever really like him? On the other hand a character like Bash, who's got the most interesting backstory of all, is shoved aside to leave more spaces for Ashe whining about the nethicite.

The game's got many good sides. The battle system is one of the funniest I tried, and graphics are great under every aspect, just to mention a couple. But it just misses that special something...