TL;DR: 10/10, nearly flawless in the same vein as ff9, which I didn't think possible in a modern game. (I have never played the original so I cannot compare, but I personally think the 30-40 year old men gatekeeping the original on minor changes are 100% ignorable.)

Story: 7/10*
*it's not really fair to judge this on its own given it's the 2nd part of 3, but in doing so the story is slightly lacking relative to the rest of the experience. Judging the first 2 together it would be somewhere around a 9/10 for me, and it would be difficult to believe it won't be a 10/10 after part 3 unless they give it the kingdom hearts treatment (I believe they've learned from their mistakes with those games).

Writing: 10/10
-Not a lot to say here, the writing is excellent 99% of the time.

Gameplay: 10/10
-Main gameplay is one of the best FF combat systems, comparable to KH2 in terms of action combat. If you're a minigame hater I understand, but I am a minigame enjoyer outside of a couple of misses which is understandable given the immense number of them.

Characters: 10/10
- After part 1 I was convinced I didn't like most of the main cast despite them being technically good characters. I was wrong. This game has the best character building I've ever seen in a game, and is in general the main focus of the game.

Music: 10/10
- There is no doubt in my mind that this game has the best OST of any game ever made, not necessarily because the individual songs are better than other games with great soundtracks, but because of the sheer quantity and variety of music at that level of quality, and the way that the songs are used.

Graphics: 9/10
-Definitely a step down from say, FF16, in terms of absolute fidelity of textures/models. However, the overall package to me is just as good if not better when viewed on a macro scale. I personally think the drop in texture/environmental model quality is mostly due to file size limitations rather than devs being lazy or whatever, as the game is nearly 150gb as it is. (This does not apply to characters, although the lighting also leaves a bit to be desired)

Worldbuilding: 10/10
- The sheer scale of the game, and quantity/quality of locations has not been matched in my opinion. Of course it doesn't have cities on the scale of say Cyberpunk, but it doesn't need to to make the world believable.

Voice Acting: 10/10
- I played with JP dub, but I doubt you can go wrong with any language.

Pacing: 6/10
- This is a difficult one because in terms of game progression the pacing has no issues, but in the overall story most of the progression is backloaded into the final few hours of the game as you might expect given the nature of it being part 2 of 3. That isn't to say the rest of the game has no meaning or purpose, just that it isn't necessarily focusing on the overarching story of the trilogy a lot of the time. You could call it filler if you wanted to be cynical, but I don't see it that way personally.

Exploration: 10/10
- The first "open" world game I've played since probably fallout 3 that I actually wanted to explore the entire world and see everything there is to see and do. I am a known hater of open worlds though, so others may have differing opinions. Every region has unique mechanics for exploration, and none of them are so large as to be completely overwhelming or so small as to be trivial.

Performance: 10/10
- I played on 30fps quality mode and I can count on 1 hand the number of times there was a noticeable frame drop within 110 hours of gameplay to complete the story. This is in extreme contrast to other square games I've played recently like ff16, which had massive performance issues often.

Overall: 10/10
- Easily among the best games ever made in my opinion, especially if you consider it in the frame of it being a 3 part trilogy (assuming the last part can maintain the quality). For me personally, it is the best game ever made, but I'll add the disclaimer that I don't/haven't played a lot of other top candidates and don't enjoy them (Nintendo games, GTA etc.)