The closest connection to Final Fantasy is the title
The latest entry into the numerical FF series is, in short, a disappointment. There are various things wrong with it, and in terms of style, it doesn't resemble the previous FF games at all.
On the positive side, the game is somewhat playable and pretty fun at times, has relatively good voice acting, and is also one of the greatest looking games on the PS2 if not the greatest. However, due to the series' previous accomplishments and the current quality of other RPG brands, it's surprising how relatively poorly this game turned out.
The negatives far outweigh the positives. The first thing you'll find wrong with the game is the poor camera control, there's no way to invert your camera meaning you'll be fiddling with it all the way to the end. Also, due to the game's action RPG combat system, the camera will follow your character closely in a 3rd person perspective. The camera is far too close to your character and you have a terrible view of what's around you, if they really wanted to go for that they should have imported the Kingdom Hearts camera. This is a terrible pullaway from the traditional top-down, distant, static camera that we all know and love. FFXII's art style also goes completely south, as it replaces the usual high fantasy and epic settings with claustrophobic dungeons and terribly bland looking cities.
Artistic presentation continues to disappoint when you hear the music in this game, which sounds like a 14 year old took 5 minutes to make it with a synthesizer. There are no main themes, no memorable tracks, nothing. There aren't even good tracks, most of them are so bad you want to turn your volume down. Since FF has always been known for its great presentation, it's simply silly for this game to utterly fail in this department like this.
To make matters worse, the crown jewel of the Final Fantasy series, the story and characters, has been completely ignored. When you think of a Final Fantasy game, you can immediately recollect the main characters and evoke the feeling of the storyline since the character and plot development was always so deep, intricate and moving. Absolutely absent from FFXII is the feature that has made all the Final Fantasies so great. The characters look completely inconspicuous, there's absolutely nothing to differentiate the main characters from just people in the street. In fact, often the people in the streets have more personality than your characters. The voice acting for the main character is terrible (he sounds and looks like a 12 year old nerd, although in the story he's supposed to be 18), and dialogue amounts to "we should go to the next dungeon now because we've just gotten out of this one".
Ironically, this game has more cutscenes and dialogue events than any other Final Fantasy. In fact, every other minute in the game is a cutscene, which in fact gets quite annoying when you're just trying to play and the game is constantly interrupting you with excess dialogue, even considering the genre. However, none of these build up the story, the characters almost never interact, and the game is finished without anything being concluded. While the characters and stories from, say, FFVII may stay with you for years, the characters in FFXII can easily be forgotten in a day.
In the end, other than weapon and enemy names, this game doesn't look like, sound like, or play like a Final Fantasy. While that would be perfectly fine if the game were actually well executed, unfortunately it's not, and I would recommend fans of the genre or the series pass this one up, even if they see it for a discounted price.
