Well, I've grown up on games, and FF has most definitely been a portion of my childhood, but in all honesty, FF12 wasn't that bad. What it lacked in story, it made up in improvements and ideas that I thought Squenix was incapable of doing. The gambit system was fun and intuitive and though people complain that you can let the CPU do all of the work, your the one who has to plan it all.
Assuming you didn't grab a FAQ and have them breast feed you the game, you actually had to learn what gambits worked well and what you could have the computer do to save you time. I've heard complaints from people saying they beat the final boss without even touching the controller, but I did that back with FF1-FFX by simply putting a pillow on the attack button. Besides that, unless u power leveled, most creatures kept you on your toes and forced you to micromanage your party, so telling Vann to attack 120 times when you could automate it and do something else is being productive, not redundant.
Graphically the game looks its best, but this series doesn't get points for that anymore, and though I miss Nobou's composing, the FFT Composer, whose name escapes me did a bang up job of making some memorable pieces. I still listen to the OST.
The world of Ivalice however is where I give FF12 the most credit. There are a plethora of side quests and side ventures that kept me happily occupied more so than the main plot did, and each dungeon could be revisited and further explored for even more treasure and back story. The game had alot of extra content because it was imitating an MMO, and sadly enough it did a better job of imitating a good offline MMO in this game then it did with an ACTUAL MMO! (Take that FFXI!)
All in all, I didn't like the story either. Vann was worthless, Ashe was a prissy ***** (which was a real let down btw), Penelo was loopier then Yuffie, Basch at least I felt for, Fran was just a nice ass on camera, fuck if all else, and Baltheir could have stolen the whole show. The characters weren't the best cast in the world and the plot needs management, but the GAME aspect of FF12 is just as new and refreshing as the series has always been. The License board and leveling system kept me entertained and the Free world battles made some more action shine on to JRPGS genre as a whole. It's by no means perfect and I still give it an 8.5 overall, but if you're a fan of the series, you already know that FFX was the last true game. SquareSoft died in the merger, and Squenix slowly killed off any of the founding members that hadn't jumped ship before hand. The series has been on a decline for years now and FF13 certainly proves that, but hey, there games, and they are either going towards some new horizon or a dust bin in purgatory. So I'm not mad at ya.