I'm looking at buying this game, does anyone have any experience of it? From the reviews and screenshots it looks pretty good; although I have heard some Final Fantasy followers complaining about it.

If you give me your mailing address I will gladly ship you my copy just to get it out my home because it's taking up space. It's very gently used; less than 15 hours. No refunds.

It is graphically amazing. The pinnacle of achievement on the PS2. That's about the best I have to say for it. The following is purely subjective and just my opinion: The gameplay gets very boring really fast. It's the repetition of turn-base, meets some sort of red-headed stepchild of wanna-be real time action but without the thrill of mashing buttons. They introduce side quests early and often (yay), you aren't nearly strong enough to pull it off (boo). I found that frustrating. Also, I hated the whole concept and the very terminology of a license grid. A close friend of mine tells me that's just my own personal prejudice... but when I pick up a new weapon in a dungeon I don't think I should have to hike all the way across a license board and pay license points to use the damn thing. The rhythm of the story is not very well integrated into the game-play and it often seems either disruptive to the flow or it's been so long that I've seen something that advances the plot that I've forgotten what's going on. (In all fairness, I have no memory and frequently forget what happened 5 minutes ago. However, my younger and more mentally agile friends assure me that they experience the same thing in this game.)

As far as I'm concerned Final Fantasy peaked with IX. Yeah, you read that right, I'm about the only person I know who just loves IX so that whole review should probably be taken with a grain of salt. After that I'd go for VI, VII and X as a distant 4th.