I have very conflicting opinions about this game.
I poured 80 hours into the game before I finished, yet I think it's one of the worst in the series. So obviously I still enjoyed it somehow? Well I will say that the two things that carry this entire game is the battle system and the job system. It's just so satisfying and fun to set up gambits and build your characters.

I will also say that I like the characters. Since the story sections are so small, every time these characters spoke, I just wanted to hear more. They're so charming, even Vaan.

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But you know what isn't fun? Being absolutely slammed by every single boss in the game because they slap every single status effect under the sun on you. This is the prime example for why I hate status effects in JRPGs. It's artificial difficulty. If my characters are strong enough, I want to win the fight. I don't want to get one shot because I got hit with some obscure status effect I don't have a way to get rid of yet (by the way, this is the final fantasy game with so many status effects that they start to OVERLAP). Status effects begin to lose all meaning when you subject me to all of them at once. And although Final Fantasy V also loved status effects, the difference was, I was able to use the same status effects on the enemy as well. Every single boss in this game is immune to pretty much everything except slow, silence, and sometimes blind. It makes the time mage absolutely useless!
Also, shout out to the worst status effect in the game, one that doesn't even have a name and can't be blocked, and just drains all 300 of your character's MP in the blink of an eye, making my mage absolutely useless. And there is now way to reverse it. You just have to use ten ethers, or use up one of your precious Hi-ethers. Every time this happened to me I wanted to throw my joycons at the television.

The game is just way too hard. You never feel powerful at any point in this game. I can be going through a low level area with level 40 characters and still get team wiped out of absolutely bloody nowhere (The three bosses before the final boss are baby-level easy, but then the final boss can pull out an attack where it team wipes your three active characters and then one-shots individual characters. The enemies have so much BS and the player's tools all suck. Every boss is immune to libra, and half of them can become immune to magic and/or physical damage for however long they wish. IF THE BOSS CAN BECOME IMMUNE TO PHYSICAL DAMAGE, LET ME SWITCH OUT VAAN FOR BASCH, WHY DO THEY HAVE TO NOT BE 'TARGETED' TO BE ABLE TO SWAP OUT? THIS JUST FORCES MY CHARACTERS TO NOT PLAY THE GAME FOR TWO MINTUES!
This game just pulls BS out of its ass to stop the player having fun. "What's that? You barely survived this hour long fight after tactically setting up the right gambits? Let me just start one-shotting your characters faster than you can raise them.
(The only bosses I found fun in this entire game were Belias, Mateus, Deathgaze and Gilgamesh, the last of which still kind of annoyed me)

And the tools that the player has suck so much. Quickenings are not explained in game ever, forcing you to watch a YouTube tutorial to understand them. But even still, they do a pathetic amount of damage. These big cinematic moves where the characters are breaking the fabric of reality should not be totally nullified by armour, or do barely more than a tickle to the enemy. There is one particular hunt in the game (Ixion) who survived a 12-hit quickening combo (and therefore the most powerful combo finisher) TWICE, and still didn't die. Are you aware how tricky it is to get a black hole quickening chain TWICE in a ROW! If I get that, I don't care what enemy I'm facing, it should immediately die. FFX allowed Yojimbo's insta-death to be used against every single boss in the game, so why can't the same happen here? This requires a lot more effort and skill than just paying Yojimbo all your gil.
And your other mist option is summoning espers. This is the worst implementation of summoning espers in the series, namely because your character stays and chills with the esper while its fighting. I do see why they did this, to allow you to heal the esper and stuff, but if you don't have decoy, then the boss just targets you instead of the esper, and kills you in two hits, which dismisses the esper. What's the point in giving an esper 9999 HP if the boss can just one-shot the summoner instead and COMPLETELY NEGATE THE SECOND MOST POWERFUL ESPER IN THE GAME. And the Esper's finishers have the same problem as quickenings, where they do jack shit to the enemy health bar. Would it hurt to give these flashy cinematic attacks some extra oomph? If not, then what was the point giving them a cutscene?
The only esper that is helpful at all is Zeromus, as he can be used to cheese high level bosses (which of course I used to beat the final boss)

Thirdly, this game is way too dark. Not in tone, but as in terms of I can't see anything on screen. The Golmore jungle might as well be a black void for all I know. I had to rely heavily on the mini map in this game to see where I'm going (except for the one annoying dungeon where the mini map is purposely vague and unhelpful, even though there are numerous timed lock and key puzzles in the same dungeon). Just let me turn the brightness up in the settings, please! This makes it even worse because clearly a lot of work was put into the locations, and I can't properly admire them because it's too dark.

Progression is a chore in this game. I am super glad I played this on switch and not PC, because I needed all 8- hours, and I still didn't get a single ribbon. Or all the spells. Or decent armour. Becuase every slightly helpful thing in this game can't be brought from shops like other FF games, but instead uses the FFX method of hiding it in obscure fetch quests that take thirty more hours, or as 0.0001% drops in high level areas that you need said armour to even get into! Just give me a ribbon! Every other FF game practically gives me one ribbon for free, and with the hundred and one status effects I'm subjected to in this game, it's the most necessary here than in any other game. But no, again, the game hates you having fun. The game encourages you to manipulate the RNG to get particular weapons, which is the worst game design I have ever seen. If the plan was to only allow 0.0001% of players to get their hands on the Zodiac spear, don't make the zodiac spear necessary to get through particular levels.

The story is confusing. I have no idea what's going on, and the story only starts to have coherent themes at Giruveygun, 50ish hours into the story. It's a huge shame, because the cutscene on top of Pharos was one of the best cutscenes in Final Fantasy, but is literally one of the only times that Vaan is important in the story, or even one of the only times that members of the party talk to each other about the themes! It's a really good theme of revenge being unfulfilling, and if the game had leant more into that theme rather than political intruige that flew over everyone's head, that would have helped everyone actually enjoy the story and appreciate the characters more.

Lastly, the level design could be a lot cooler. The game falls back on the aforementioned dimly lit caves and forests that are hard to see. But I would have loved the game if there had been more Feywoods, sky fortresses and Necrohol of Nabudiss. But instead all the boring locations make the adventure feel like some light stroll around a backyard rather than an epic adventure filled with magic and monsters. That's a problem with the tone as well. The game tries to be more realistic than others in the series, which just makes every enemy have the same ambiguous monster appearance, and drain all the life out of every other setting with dull grey and brown colour pallates. Which also means that when we finally get a typical Final Fantasy final boss transformation, it is laughably out of place.

All in all, Final Fantasy XII is a very frustrating game that had massive wasted potential and only served to irritate me more and more the longer I played it.