I still think the older FF games were better overall.

I was thinking about the characters in the Final Fantasy series the other night, and how I felt they went downhill in their originality and overall feel after FFIX. FFVII-IX had more interesting characters, but the characters from X onwards are okay-ish, but nothing great at all. Perhaps it has something to do with voice acting? I found that when reading you get a 'nicer' feel for a character in your head, rather than when some dodgy voice acting is used.

Don't get me wrong, this game is sweet. FFXIII and Tales of Vesperia are the best JRPG offerings for this current generation, (not like this gen has such a great variety of JRPGs to be honest). But I am enjoying it, but I think a lot of western orientated gamers may find issue with it, well more specifically with the JRPG genre as a whole (like Azimuth ). Either you love it, or hate it.