Pacific Theater of Operations IV. You are the basicaly the secretary of the Navy/CINC for whichever forces in WWII you choose(Brit, German, American, Japanese.) The graphics suck, the development of strategy is tortorously slow and in the end you may just watch all of your expensive, carefully crafted hardware sink to the bottom of the briney deep. My uncle, who was a sailor in WWII is addicted to this game, though he allways builds armored cruisers. (everybody knows a 40 knot Destroyer, swamped with torpedo tubes gives you more bang for the buck than some artsy-fartsey "balanced attack" cruiser.) If the recipient of the game loves chess and can learn to manipulate the controller, they will probably like it.
I already got Tony Hawk's Underground, which is really great. I rented Gotham City Racing II, which is pretty cool. I also know I'm getting Silent Hill 3 for Christmas. Final Fantasy isn't really my sort of thing, unless they redid the format.