Final Fantasy Hacktics

- Item customization
The key concept for me in this game . You can make your own weapons , armors , food (!) etc or make 'em better by combining two equips or adding jewels and ores . I'm pretty sure there are over 500 itens in this game which makes the scavenger hunt very enjoyable
You can open up skills to create itens as you buy skill books in the game , and when you have the right level you'll open 'advanced skills' which helps you in some weird way ( Eg. Summon a gigant bunny to walk around in the world map pretty much like a chocobo ) .
Early in the game you can also open the 'pickpocket' skill which you can use to steal itens from people in town and even your own team members in 'Private Actions' ( tho it'll most likely drop your friendship level with them ) and later you get the advanced skill which-I-forgot-the-name to create counterfeit checks you can sell for a high amount of money , contracts that grant you ownership of INNs so you don't have to pay for the night and even itens that level you up =p

- Real time battles
No turns , you can move around the battlefield to attack monsters , run around them , lure to let your other chars attack it from behind , run from mobs when you are low on health and give time to the healers to cure you and much more . Most of the strong spells will 'freeze' the battle due to animation purposes but you can choose which spells your mages can cast or even put them in a melee mode . After you get some skills books , you'll open the combo counter - it won't add damage or anything but you can see which fighting skills are being triggered .

- Characters relaionship
All haracters in the game are unique with their own personalities , they have their own list of skills that they are good at ( writing , drawing , cooking etc ) and you can train them to get the skills they aren't naturally proficient at . Favorite foods which will heal them for 100% HP and MP . . .
You can futher the interaction with them through the 'Private Actions' . Those are events that happens in pretty much every town in the game , some at specific times , others can be started at any point . You can raise ( or drop ) your friendship/love level with them - which will affect the ending and even the support they give to your character in battle ( Eg. if you have a really bad relationship with Rena she'll heal other more often than you ) .
There are all sorts of events , it will explain things related to the story , others events are romantic-oriented , some will be very funny ( Eg. when Leon tells Claude that he is in love with all female members of your team and ask you to get him to 'date' one of them ) and so on . On most of the events you can either help your friends and get a better relationship with them or mess the whole thing and make even the serious events hilarious .

- Replay
Due to the several combinations of possible endings , which is something around 80 combinations or so plus the different difficulty levels you can open up later I'd say replaying the game is always fun and the increased difficulty makes the game even better .

The graphics aren't good but the game is awesome . The 'freedom' you have in this game is something I've never seen in any other game thus making Star Ocean 2 unique to me , since it's not a 'static' game something aways change whenever you play it . It beats any FF game I've played so far .

- Every character's backstory was thoroughly explored.
- Cliches abound in any RPG, but only one portion of the plot felt overly cheesy and/or forced to me.
- It had everything that was good about Lunar 1.
- All five characters were useful.  Each one of them played a role that was significantly different from the others.  The closest to redundancy is the "second" swordsman type character, but considering the main character feels a bit more like a red mage than a straight up warrior, I don't feel the overlap is too bad.
- A strong and balanced mix of drama and humor.
- Very well developed world lore.
- Best genre savvy Xanatos Gambit I have ever seen.

- The story is fairly predictable.  The only time it caught me off-guard was when I figured out the twist half-way through the game and the characters never did... even in the epilogue.  Basically I couldn't care much less about it's story.  Most of the characters seem to be perpetually stupid anyways.
- Positioning mattered.  Frankly this amazes me as the field was made of hexagons instead of squares.  Somehow they managed to keep the player able to hide the squishy characters behind the front lines if necessary.
- Grinding was rarely necessary and had an enemy you could fight to make it relatively painless.
- Almost every Job/Class/Profession had its uses and advantages.  Same goes for the abilities.  Secutor Equip or whatever it was called is especially valuable because they have the highest raw attack power weapons in the game and is the only way to enable equipping shields.  The closest to useless were Excavator (only good for extreme movement), High Templar (poor stat multipliers, spread too thin, but good skills), and Extremists or whatever they were called.  Only three nearly useless is pretty danged good.  If I didn't have a habit of sticking with the story relevant characters, I would have had a hard choice on which jobs to use.
- The game had great balance.  The enemies generally weren't pushovers.  Many missions had certain methods to turn the tide in your favor if you took the right approach, but it didn't exactly cheapen the experience to do so.  Often the gimmicks made each fight feel more fresh and innovative.  Sadly this ended around the last chapter.  The game became too easy.
- Many of the story character exclusive jobs were fun to use.  That said, Tony isn't worth using anymore as soon as you become able to recruit more characters, the main character's gun sucks and her stats are an example of why "Jack of all trades" sucks in such games, the last story character you get has such dismal speed as to be a liability, and Ragnar has one passive ability that only he can have that allows you to make him virtually immortal.

- Deep story.
- Optional side-stories you can read that are deep with philosophy or emotion.
- A strong variety in characters.
- An innovative way to approach the traditional row mechanic that requires significantly more strategy.
- Mages are the way mages always should have been.  They need the support of protective tanks to survive, and their spells, while costly, are actually powerful enough to be worthy of the concept.  Seriously, swinging around a sword should never be as effective as conjuring a massive explosion in your enemy's face.
- Random encounters weren't just a sea of mooks you had to trudge through while dispatching with your weakest attacks.  Unless you power-leveled, you had to take them seriously to survive.  They were also quite rare compared to most of the genre.  Less annoyance and more significance?  Yes please.
- Bosses required critical thinking to beat.  Most were survivable before knowing what you were going up against, but you had to figure out their weak point, vulnerability, or whatever countered them most effectively quickly or risk a game over.  That said, if you did lose, there was usually some way you could go back and prepare a bit to make the battle easier.
- The game gave you a few really awesome and customizable characters in the form of the immortals, but if you tried relying exclusively on these toys, you would wind up screwed.  The immortals' best method of learning abilities was by learning them by fighting beside the mortals that had those abilities.  You get the abilities on the mortals by leveling them up.  While there are several points in the story where your party is dictated to you, the latter parts of the game gave you the choice... yet it still required that you keep shuffling characters around so you could continue to improve the immortals.  Basically this "soft cap" on how long you could effectively use a core party helped vary things up and keep the game from growing stale.