12 Granted a lot of freedom, which was cool, but I think it still had some kinks to work out. It was kind of slow moving sometimes. It also had the pretty bad gambits for magic. Unless you controlled your team's magic, they'd either never use it, or never have any MP.
12's cutscenes and stuff were cool, and I have been a big fan of the ivalice games anyway. I do think however vaan should have had more to do with the storyline at all, or they should have scrapped it all and made balthier the lead. Heck, balthier even told you he was when you met him, lol.