To me, this installment in the Final Fantasy series was better than 8, but obviously not up to par with 7. I like how they sort of brought it "back to the roots", most obviously with the appearance of the Black Mages/Wizards. Seems a strange move to have made the characters short and cartoony again considering 8's more realistic appearance, but it didn't really bother me that much.
The storyline was pretty interesting, but what this game really lacked was that one true main character that you could get into. It lacked the enigmatic Cloud, or even Cecil from back in the SNES days. It was more of a group thing, which is fine I guess, but still a boy with a little tail wasn't going to cut it for me.
The combat was improved from 8 and thank goodness they got rid of the whole "Draw" command. This game featured the high quality graphics and FMVs you've come to expect from Final Fantasy and brought back a lot of the traditional feel (it definitely didn't have the very modern-almost-futuristic feel of FF8). Good effort, but still nothing great to me.