I heard all that"it's a breathe of fresh air stuff" before on another forum back when the game first came out and it failed to move me then..and still I don't see it.
I just don't see it.

Maybe it's too subtle for me..as someone else pointed out maybe some of us can't see the subtlities of the game.Maybe some of us want those larger then life characters.

We don't want sudued characters who are overwhelmed by the opposition ..by the judges and Cid when they had scenes.
I am not sure the subtle characterization of the heroes is deliberate either.I always felt it was due to Matusno's departure.That if he had stayed he would have done more to make the characters more dynamic like he did in FF Tactics.

You look at historical characters from Grant and Lee, to Rommel and Patton...I want my game characters to have this driving will and my villains as someone pointed out in another thread to be very bad..Sephiroth/Kefka/Kuja bad and Vayne just comes up way way short of those guys imo.

After some of the excessive debating on the FFXIII thread..which I agree that we don't want to go to the negativity there..rotfl..and we can have a more polite debate here..rotfl...
It all does come down to opinion.

We all have our preferences about what an dynamic rpg should have and in particular what an FF should have.I want my FFs to be dynamic and epic and FFXII falls way short of the mark for me on what I perceive an FF should be.