Are the graphics better?
Are the characters better?
Are the weapons better?

I want some answers!!!

It's not out yet

ALmost certainly YES to all those...

But we won't know for sure until it comes out...

Same time post as Angrywolf, lol.

Did you mean Final Fantasy XII?

EDIT: Why is the first post in the Moderation Queue?

We don't know since XIII ain't out yet but I am guessing it will probably be better than XII

It was in the queue so that it the thread title can be corrected. I believe that he meant XII, and typed an I too many.

To answer your question relating to XII...

Graphics are better. Weapons are better. Characters are worse off. I honestly don't see much character development that was there in previous FF's so I'm going to have to say no on that count.

I agree with Kru to an extent. There is development but not to the extent of previous FF's. However, this is a different plot than others and focuses on the Political Story as opposed to the Characters. Not everyone's cup of tea but, and this is just my opinion, it's the best FF yet especially when you consider the gameplay. Still, that's just my opinion and it will differ from others but I think most will agree about the graphics and gameplay. It's different class.

I also think it is the best FF out there. What's really good about it is that there are so many challenges for this game, you could replay and replay and never get tired.

Agreed, Judge. After 14 months continous play I am still nowhere near finished with this game. The best value for money I have ever seen in a game and I have been playing games since the early 1980's.

Well the game is beautiful, some of the characters are completely useless to the story (ie. penelo).Your main character (the person that you control all day) Vaan doesn't even know why he is there. The story just never seems to hypnotize you in wanting to play for hours on end. I restarted the game 7 times but i always lose interest and stop playing it for several months.(never happened with any other final fantasy 7-X2.I can go on all day about the story but bottom line, it sucks. The story probably would have been a little better if Balthier was the main character and not Vaan.
As for the weapons you can give any character any weapon as long as you have a license for it. but it doing this none of the characters really have a unique fighting style.
As for the battles the gambit system is a very nice addition to the game it allows characters to act without them twiddling their thumbs waiting for you to tell them what to do. (you can do that to.) Another good thing about the combat is that even if your 3 party die you still have the other 3 so it makes you want to use all the characters unlike previous games.(in ff9 i never played with amarant, quina, or eiko). Now a gripe i have about the battle system is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to flee from battle, if you hit R2 the enemies will just chase you they are always faster so you RARELY lose them.
The game is beautiful there is no complaints about that.

Bottom Line: it's only about $20 now you should add it to your collection and give it a shot (that's why i kept it because final fantasy was on the title)

final score: 7.5/10

quote Cyanide318

....Now a gripe i have about the battle system is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to flee from battle, if you hit R2 the enemies will just chase you they are always faster so you RARELY lose them....

No doubt, they will chase you for a while but they give up quick enough. Sure you may get hit once or twice as you flee so don't wait till you are one hit away from dieing to run. if you are careless enough to flee into other enemies then you get the thumping you deserve. I highly prefer the fleeing system in XII to any game where you choose flee and just get a flat % chance of success.

As for the original 3 questions:

The graphics are steller (for a PS2 game)

The characters are (to me) flat and uninteresting

The weapons suffer from the fact that everyone can use any weapon. This leads to all your characters being the same if you allow it (how many times have we all seen the advise "just go get 3 Deathbringers"). I solve this shortcomming by not having more than 1 of any type of weapon/armor and outfitting my characters in such a way as to force them into certain roles.

In one way all tha characters being basicly the same is nice. If a player wants Penelo and Fran to be the tanks and Basch and Balthier to be the mages it is perfectly doable.

Like others had said, the character development is poor. But the battle system is much better than previous FF games, (it's one of my favorites now) so if you don't mind the lack of character development and a political story line you may enjoy this game

of course enemies will chase you,but you can still lose them;they give up after you get so far away,and you can run faster than them in fleeing mode. the only exception is with teleport monsters--you are unlikely to lose them unless you exit the area.