I haven't played the first four games, and I'm not sure if we like the same aspects of a game. So I don't think my tour through FF XII could indicate if you might like it or not, especially if you didn't enjoy FF IX - that game just dethroned FF VII (my favorite part so far, just slightly ahead of FF VI). But I'll still try to help .
For one thing, I *think* I like what they did to combat in FF XII: no wandering monsters, no battle arena. Fine… now let's play on!