doubt this is better than ff12
would rather play ff12: international
it screw less thing in the miscellaneous department (like giving the player decent loot instead of a chest with 2 GIL) the combat is better in that it involve less time staring at a screen like an idiot but it's worse in that you don't have a lot of control over it (there aren't even items to use) and get super easy once your healer gets strong enough,the plot is a different kind of awfull,where FF12 just squander around with nothing interessing happens,xenoblade start decent enough but by the end it follows the jrpg
plot flow chart to a level where you start to think picking another favourite genre
the character all have their specialized role but it's really hard to not be tempted by the attacker-tank-healer squad and the other character just end up as extra luggage
both games have special named enemies to fight but in xenoblade most of the time they boil down to the same fight you would have had with a normal monster had he been a few level higher,while that fucker in FF12 who healed himself to full and then started spamming blaster was incredibly cheap at least you had to think of a way to cheap him out,one thing that i hate a lot is that in xenoblade if you are 6 level below a monster 90% your attack against it will automaticaly miss
the bestiary also sucks,a lot of rpg recolors their monster (including FFXII) so you might think "ehy what's the deal" but trust me,it has never been done on the same level as here,prepare yourself to see the same ants and bats and rabbits over and over and over
unlike final fantasy XII there are quest a-la wow like "bring me 3 rabbit paws" but solving them can be a huge pain in the ass,while the drop are rather generous and therefore you never end up spending too much time getting the required items,the city are pretty big and each NPC has a schedule that he follows so finding an NPC can be a nightmare,you get some info about where and when to find them but this info is all scattered and hard to navigate because it's put in a messy UI
TL;DR version
i don't think you would like it more than FFXII,you seems to like FFXII more for control freak reasons like "i can make vaan a mage and penelo a warrior" and you'll have nothing like that here,also there is no yasumi matsuno plot,generic plot flow chart is what expect you
but if you just want another plain walking simulator go ahead and walk to your content
