It's been a long, winding path toward satisfaction for those waiting for a new, proper Final Fantasy game. It is nearly two years since the original projected U.S. release date for Final Fantasy XII. Two long years since we were supposed to have the game in our hands – no, spinning in our consoles! It's been even longer since the first screens were shown, since Vaan and Ashe were revealed, since it was confirmed that Ivalice would be the home world of the title, finally pulling the Final Fantasy Tactics world into the public eye, since Final Fantasy Tactics Advance whet our appetites with a fresh take on that world that would hint at many things to come once FFXII finally, finally, finally would arrive ....

And I'll be the first to say that, for those of you waiting for a new, traditional Final Fantasy game, you might want to get something to bite down on so you don't slice your tongue in half when you wince at this: You might be waiting a few years longer and spending a few hundred dollars more to get what you've been waiting for.

Those of us with an open mind, myself included, can look forward to what I'm willing to call the best FF of the decade.

Before I move on, allow me to clear up a slight misconception: XII does not have a true real-time battle system. The system is simply automatic, and turns are activated based on meters that mark the passage of real time. This is similar to something familiar: the ATB system from the majority of the FF games released so far! The difference here is, the turns occur without input necessarily being required from the player.

So the next question is, how do you control your party members? Strange as it seems for those used to Japanese-style RPGs, you do, and you don't. Players set up macros for their characters, based on action and reaction, called Gambits. Each character starts with two Gambit slots and can unlock more on the License Board, the FFXII version of the Sphere Grid from FFX, which will be discussed in length later. The Gambit menu is a massive list of various possible situations, which have to be unlocked by purchasing the information from Gambit Shops around Ivalice. These range from the obvious, such as If Party Member Is Poisoned, to the not-so-obvious, like If The Party Leader's Target Is HP Critical (which they often will be, given the pace at which this game moves). The second part of the Gambit is the action. Anything available in the individual character's menu during battle can be used as the result of the initial condition being met. So yes, you can decide to target the party leader for a physical attack if he or she is Status: HP Critical.

Here is where players need to be careful: The Gambits must be ordered based on preference. So, if a supporting character should heal when the party leader's HP is below 70%, make sure to place the Gambit that casts Cure above the standard physical attack gambit, usually Attack Party Leader's Target or Attack Nearest Enemy. Otherwise, the game will recognize attacking the target as more important than healing, despite your leader's rapidly dropping HP.

If you're having trouble keeping up with the action even at the slowest speeds (of which there are six available), you can switch to Wait mode, which is nothing more than an automatic pause feature whenever menus are opened. My personal playstyle is to keep the action flowing quickly with Active during "normal" battles – which are no longer random, but with enemies that walk the land freely – and to switch to Wait mode when things get a little tough, such as fighting special enemies or bosses.

As FFX was reliant on the somewhat-broken Sphere Grid system, the License Board that drives FFXII is much more reliable. It exists for customization, like the Grid before it, but does it much better than before. The Board is literally a board, a modified chessboard, with large black spaces that presumably mark spaces for which no skills were developed. (At the point I'm at in the game, which I have not finished yet, there seems to be nothing to these black spaces.) Each square contains a different skill, which License Points are used to unlock. New characters will have just enough skills opened for their current equipment to be compatible, and players will have to take it from there, revealing new skills by purchasing one, which reveals displays the contents of adjacent squares.

When I say "skill," I'm not just referring to FF standbys like Steal and Libra; those are referred to as Techniques and are also available on the Board. I literally mean the skill to do just about anything in the game. To wield a specific spear, you'll need to have the proper grade of spears – whether it's Spears 1, Spears 3, or perhaps a square dedicated to a single, special spear – purchased on the Board. If you want to build a character with all of the best healing spells unlocked, you'll have to save up the License Points and travel around the Board, going from the first spot where healing spells appeared and trying to cut a logical swath through the skills, extra Gambits, and passive abilities you are required to unlock before finding the next grade of healing spells.

I haven't opened an entire board just yet, but I've seen quite a few of the passive abilities, and they're incredibly interesting, and often much more important to keeping a party member alive than simply level-grinding. The Lore line of abilities increases the potency of normal items like potions, phoenix downs, and remedies. Some passives will add 100 HP or MP to the receiving character. Others are more specific, such as gaining extra Attack power when in an HP Critical state. I won't go into too much detail, to keep some of the surprise intact, but as I've progressed in the game, I don't think anything has excited me more than running into a new passive upgrade or ability.

If you managed to read through these last few paragraphs, you might have had a light bulb explode in your head with the realization that you'll be spending blocks of time in menus. You're right; you'll be looking at (beautifully designed) menus for upwards of five minutes at a time on a regular basis. The thing is, you won't be returning to these menus for some time after each long round – depending on how you manage it, of course – and the battles move so incredibly smoothly and quickly that it makes up for it entirely. But it's true: This type of flow is very different from what FF fans are used to.

FFVIII had quite a bit of menu meat on its bones, but the sheer time spent probably won't compare to the Gambit and License tweaking in this version. There's also a lot to read, although it's completely optional. The Guild menu is full of information on every single enemy that's been killed, as well as the log of each hunt. Hunts are side-quests reminiscent of the Hunter's Guild from the Phantasy Star games – hapless clients in search of help in getting crazed monsters the hell away from their trade routes, or what have you. You kill what they want you to kill, and you get a small reward in return, but mostly you'll follow these quests for the fun and challenge of the hunt, and perhaps, for some of us, to scratch that itch that requires us to complete every little thing in a Japanese RPG. These quests may have been available from the outset, but somehow, the work reminds me of something Executive Producer Akitoshi Kawazu would have added, or at least polished, after he arrived to tie off the loose ends when original director Yasumi Matsuno dropped off the face of the earth during the last few months of development. They smack of SaGa, and I mean that in the best way possible.

Another bit that just hits me as strangely Kawazu is the Mist system, a weird button-input combo system. A bar jumps across the screen, and a button flashes. The earlier it is pressed, the more damage that is dealt, and the next part of the combo begins in either this same way, or without a button-symbol appearing on-screen, in which case R2 must be pressed repeatedly until a button does appear on-screen, thus allowing the combo to continue. The button that flashes represents an attack to be activated by a different character with a Mist ability available, so you can control which character is attacking when in the combo. I myself have not completely adjusted to this system, but I have heard of at least 11+ hit combos being possible. The cost? The entire MP bar is drained, and it must be full to start the attack in the first place. I say this is a Kawazu concept because it is so simultaneously customizable and abstract, something in which that man seems to specialize (Unlimited Saga is as abstract as it gets, kids).

As for the story, I won't get into the first few hours of the game, or even anything past that, because the initial portion is full of twists and turns, and you don't even get to play as or even see your main character until after the first hour, which is full of plot twists and turns to which you'll have to pay close attention, in order for the weight of many of the supporting cast members' stories to have its full impact. I will say that this is a story of political intrigue, as Matsuno is known for, but with a focus on a much smaller, more lighthearted cast than usual. There are none of the anti-heroes that have dominated Final Fantasy for the past decade or so here, nor are they ultimately light-hearted Skies of Arcadia personalities. There are defining traits for each character, but they won't always react like you expect, so they read much more like characters from serialized media than the personality avatars that most Japanese RPGs pass off as a cast. Think of the close-quarters action of Vagrant Story combined with the somewhat convoluted, politically-charged plot-wrenching, and that will get you close to the unique style of FFXII.

More important than the writing, however, is the feeling of FFXII. I can see the value in many different forms of video games, including the text-heavy narratives of Japanese RPGs, or something that is communicated in cinematic terms, at least when it has a strong gameplay component like Hideo Kojima's work often does. But the best form for video games is when they relax and allow themselves to be video games, using everything unique to the medium to create a setting that communicates a sense of something without necessarily spelling it out directly. A sense of adventure, for example, is what Zelda does without telling you, "Hey, dude, you're on an adventure!" FFXII does this, although I'm not sure if adventure is the best word to describe it.

The game has a coherent world, and while it has a few narrative-heavy first hours and lots of cinematic and conversational moments to communicate direct concepts, not enough is said outright to keep the player from thinking about what is occurring. The tapestry of the concept is so strong, that even when running around on side-quests and spending hours in dungeons without a single word spoken or tossed on-screen, it doesn't feel like the game is in some different phase. Think of FFVII, when you're on the world map, when you're in a long dungeon, and when you're watching a 10-minute cinematic sequence. All of these things feel like very different portions, discontinuous from the rest of the game, despite sharing the same characters and many of the same concepts. FFXII is perfectly coherent, from cinemas to dialogue to chasing down a tomato monster on a Guild hunt.

I've only gone through what must be just under half of Final Fantasy XII, but I can say right now that I've never been so completely absorbed into a FF like this before. I won't speak too soon – there might be some twist, some change in narrative style, something that will ruin it for me, but right now, where I am in the game, I've never had a better time with this series, or this genre.

How's that for hype?