This game is AWESOME
It's hard to believe any of the Star Ocean people worked on this game as it's a complete 180.
--Light, humourous, fun story in the vein of Grandia 1 / Shadow Hearts
--Nicely written dialogue. I haven't laughed this much since SH2 and RS may be even funnier.
--Amazing visuals. This is easily the best looking rpg on the market. Backgrounds are dreamlike and everything outside of battles runs at a rock-solid 60fps. The world art is just gorgeous.
--Music is excellent. Thank god for no Sakuraba, Iwadare is putting out his best here.
--Cutscene direction is very good. Camera angles, pacing, using musical cues; everything here is done just right.
--Insanely polished, even the menus are fantastic. Easy to access full maps with almost no loading.
--Main character is great. No angst, no quietness; no he's just a kinda dumb funny kid.
--Great voice actors: Main guy Jack is played by the actress who does Naruto in Naruto. Jack's role almost seems like it was written for her as Jack basically = Naruto.
--Clothing: Looks really impressive and I look forward to equipping many pieces over the game.
--Did I mention that the game is really funny?
stuff that I'm not 100% blown away by:
--Battle system is really simple but maybe that's a good thing. You don't have any control over your cpu characters at all so it's just 1 person fighting. The fighting is pretty much just block the enemy's attack and counter or attack on your own and hope the enemy doesn't block and counter you. The lock-on works good, but when you're not locked on it can be a little frantic between enemies. Even the stats are simple (attack, defense, dodge, luck). I think going simple is a good idea to counterbalance the problems from SO3.
--Loading into and out of battles. Not bad, not good. Loading everywhere else is great.
--Time system: Kinda like a mini-shenmue. This is cool except when you looking for a NPC and they're not at home so you have to look all around town for them ^^;; You can rest at inns to kill time.
Lastly as a note for importers the text never pauses. Cutscenes go like movies with no stops, but even if you just hit circle while looking at a desk the text will disappear on it's own in a second or two. So be warned if you're a slow reader.
Put about 2:30 hours into it and so far I can see where the Jpn magazine scores are coming from. IMO this is such a high-polished high presentation product that it should be up there with FFXII and KH2 as one of SE's huge titles.
PS. Tri-ace sucks, please tell me who 'really' made this game
