I'm loving it so far.

The only beef I have is that the lack of towns/hubs (thus far, at least) don't give much of a break in the action for breathers. But the cutscenes do a pretty admirable job of making downtime. Every time something new unlocks in the battle system, I feel like more of a badass.

I don't know what chapter I'm on, so it's hard to know what to and not to say in spoilers. I don't think it's a spoiler that Shiva is in this game, though, and I just got her. So, there's that. Called a break for tonight, but I'm sure I'll be putting in a lot more time tomorrow. I'm hooked.

And, yeah, liking this way more than I ever did FFXII. I couldn't make myself care about anything that happened in that game for the four or so hours I played it. On the other hand, I already love basically every character. Especially Sazh. "Do not shake the slippery pipe" is my favorite line so far, aside from "Moms are tough."

Anyways, I love that they took a more FFVI approach of not identifying one central character, and instead making everyone intricately interconnected. Everybody is so damn interesting and has something to like about them so far.