I always thought that the idea of gaming was that you were meant to be involved? Here it feels as though I spend the vast majority of my time doing nothing but watching spectacularly dull CG clips of equally badly acted stereotyped characters. I may not have given this enough time but after several hours of doing very little I gave up.

This game is very traditional, almost to a fault. It practically reeks of Final Fantasy 9 copying. While the immortal system is okay, the battles are so obnoxiously slow that it becomes unbearable after a while. At first, it is barely noticable, but the monotony suddenly weighs down and the slow attack and magic animations make the battles far too lengthy. Since the game has random battles, this is a serious issue and annoyance, especially when you are forced to travel around an area to solve puzzles. The level cap adds to this frustration since you have no motivation to battle enemies without the promise of a buffed party. Sure, the soundtrack, aesthetics, pacing, and most all other elements of this game are great, but this whole game is tainted by one wound that is repeatedly dug into with alcohol and dirt.… Expand

This game is a total con, in movie terms, this would be a like a sequal with none of the original cast. A quick buck. Girlfriend and I are 10 hours in to this game (and very much enjoy RPG's normall) and we still completely hate every char, the bad guy, the plot, the limitations of roaming around, we are still on our 2nd weapon and using same spells as start of the game. Bosses are all either hard or impossible, as random attacks that nearly kill everyone might happen twice in a row or not at all. Only fun we are having with this game is constant mocking, such as "oh look, a badly drawn Poster that looks nothing like the ones around it, wonder if you can peel it backwards and find 100g or a new pair of earings. Cos thats where i stash my money and jewlery, begind a poster!". The game has no organic way of rewarding you with new spells or abilities, so instead you find them. For example, cast poison, guess where we found that? in a badly drawn urn in a forest, or maybe my memory fails me, maybe it was by ramming a tree with our shoulder which made it fall out of the tree. Not that a wise magician taught us it, no no, valuable items like Paralize immune headbands trypically are found in ramable trees. Our fave part of the game is the fact that Kaim is not just immortal, but a serial thief. He will happily go in to his Grandchildrens house and rip posters off walls or steal money from badly drawn gold chests (cos kids have those ofc). Maybe the people who designed the levels hired the guys from Acme (see road runner) to add the lootable items to the game, but certainly isn't hard to spot when a item has something you can steal or kick to find a lootable item. anyway, my life is too short to tell you all the reasons this game sucks, but take it from a RPG guy and his open minded GF, this game is all sorts of terrible. You will hate the plot, which you figure out about 2 hours before you are told about it, you will be given a powerpoint presentation complete with crazy animated text when you remember something (which btw, you remember in such great detail it will take 10 mins to account), fights are a pain in the ass. oh sod it, i can't go on, please for the love of god borrow it off some sap of a friend who has it and give it no more than 5 hours, as the following 5 hours will suck just as much and not improve at all.… Expand

Terribly disappointing game. Will NEVER touch Final Fantasy.

This is the WORST game I have ever played. I don't know what all these people are thinking saying that it was sold short by reviews. Its amazing they sold any copies of this game.

Mediocre game that does not live up to the hype at all. The characters are over-characterized and very cliche. The story is slow moving pretty bad, but not horrible. The dream sequences actually range from average to great, however, the developers were so lazy as to not provide any graphics for them. Thats right, the dream sequences are pure text with just a simple background image. NPCs have no voice-overs, except in cut scenes. This is a step backwards from Mass Effect. On the gameplay/mechanics side everything is slow. The turn-based system is a relic and if it could work in any current-gen game, it didn't work here. The ring system makes it a little bit more fun, but not by much. Do you enjoy watching four enemies go through five second attack animations each while you sit there and do nothing? Everything takes forever to load. These are some of the worst loading times I have seen since PSX. On top of that, while you are trying to solve puzzles you will run into random battles. Yup, this game brings back the horror of random battles. And you don't even get rewarded for them because there is a level cap in each area of the game. Meaning after you hit the level cap, you will need to sit through twenty seconds of load screens to run away from a pointless battle. The graphics range from good to PS2. Graphics aren't the most important aspect, but this game looks nowhere near as good as Gears of War or Call of Duty 4. The art direction isn't all that great either. Too many screens with beige and brown and just generally dull colors. This game fails in almost every area. Don't buy into the hype. If you are looking for a current-gen traditional RPG go with Eternal Sonata.… Expand

Not as good as FF, or Mass Effect.

The only innovative thing about this game is the retardedly boring dream system, but when you break it down, they are just text cut-scenes (I bet you can't get through the first dream without scoffing, it might as well be a mexican soap opera.) The something extremely similar to the ring system has been implemented in other jrpgs, sorry to burst everyones bubble. The game would freeze during the first load screen if I stopped playing it for a few hours, but that was most likely the shitty hardwares problem.… Expand