Quote Originally Posted by doc_bean
How is it, story and gameplay wise ? I heard that you 'program' your characters rather than play them, doesn't that make the game even more 'watching' rather than 'playing' ? Most jRPGs (past the SNES era) imo already suffer from having too little gameplay, I can't se FFXII's system as improving on that.
That's something I wonder as well. FFXII polarises opinion in most conversations I see about it. Either it's "teh r0x0rz!!!11!" or "teh wurstist game evar!!!11!" There's precious little middle ground, and not much discussion of the game itself. :eagerly awaits Gregoshi's answer:

Another peeve of mine is bosses which take forever to kill but don't pose much threat. Nothing worse than spending half an hour spamming attacks and spells to sap away 100,000,000 HP from a boss who poses virtually no threat to your well made team. Every JRPG I've played does this. DQ took it one step further with its final boss by having very boring music playing throughout the encounter. I expect FFXII is quite bad for this; it's a FF trait.

DQVIII wasn't too bad for cutscenes. I can't comment fairly on FFX except to say that the beginning was - predictably - very cutscene heavy.

Quote Originally Posted by Gregoshi
The description of DQ says it is turn based, which I think I like much better than real time like Dark Alliance or Champions of Norrath - assuming DQ combat plays similarly to FF XII.
DQ is turn based in the traditional sense of the word. You can take as long as you like on your turn; it's not artificially real time. Each character gets one turn per round; some bosses get to move twice or three times per round. Rather than having the player team all move first and the enemies all go second DQ has everyone move in order of their agility. Some small random bonuses are applied to keep the turn order from being too predictable. Unlike FFXII (I gather; I've not played it) you are always in full control of your characters. At the start of each round you set need to plan ahead. If Angelo kills one enemy out of a group of two it will be a waste of magic and damage potential for Jessica to cast a fireball on both enemies. Better to have her target another group, or to use a different spell.