Here is my first 10 hours impression of the Game, hope that this will help you out a little. I am more or less comparing this game to FFXIII but only a few little things not the whole game.
2D/3D Visuals:
The game is full 3D with 2D as background. The visual is acceptable, the 3D environment is not to bad for towns, but its a bit bare and boring during cut-scenes, the cinema animations are up to par, but the in-game animation cut-scenes are not very eye catching. (Been playing FFXIII for a while, its visual is really not that great compare to FFXIII)
Voice Overs and music:
The Voice overs are not bad, they sounds great, the music is a mix, some of them pretty good and some of them are annoying. NPCs do talk when you interact with them, even though its thoughtful but after a while you get sick of them saying the same thing over and over.
Combat System:
This is where the game shines. Instead of sword and magic, your 3 characters are using guns, either it be hand guns or machine guns. It will take you a while to learn all the things about the combat since there are quite a lot of rules. The animation in combat is pretty good, its better than the in-game animation cut-scenes, but then since they move so fast you can't really compare them. The combat visual feels like the Matrix, where you use guns to shoot your enemy while doing acrobatic moves.
How does combat work?
Its kind of a mix of RTS and TBS (Turn base strategy). There are two types of damage, Direct damage and Scratch Damage. Direct damage is caused by Hand gun, and Scratch Damage is caused by Machine Gun. You can heal Scratch Damage, but you can't kill with Scratch damage even if your enemy's health goes to zero, you will have to apply Direct damage to kill, also you can't heal direct damage (well you could but the item that you use to heal is expensive and hard to get)
There is also Hero Gauge, which is very important, at the beginning you only have 3 of them, it expends as you go through the chapters, at chapter 3 you should have 4 and 3/4 hero gauge, this gauge is expended by finding gauge crystals, which could be found either by exploring the maps or defeating a boss. Hero Gauge is replenished by killing your enemy or performed some sort of high damage move.
Hero Gauge is used to make Hero Moves and the Triad attacks. Its also your back up health supply. When one of your character received scratch damage and it reaches 0, you will lose one hero gauge and get your health back to max, but if you ran out of Hero Gauge, you enter critical stage, which you don't want to get into, because once you are in critical stage, the damage that your characters receive will be Direct damage and if one of your character dies, its game over. Once you are game over, you can reload previous saves, or spend some money to retry the battle.
Now lets get to the juicy part of combat. A Hero Move is a move that you can use to put massive damage to your enemy, once you decide to use Hero Move you will set a path for your character, and direct them to jump and attack or to run and attack, at the same time, if you use a hero move and run between the other two characters you gain a Resonance point, which is used to make the Triad Attack, a Triad Attack will enable all your characters to shoot at your enemies and the same time running in a triangle path.
It takes a while to get use to the combat system, you should go through all the tutorial in the Arena (Which is outside of the first town).
Character Leveling:
There are three different weapon levels that you can have for each of your characters, they can learn to use Hand gun, Machine gun and thrown weapon. Your Character's actual level is the sum of the levels of these three weapon levels, so if one of your character have a lv4 with hand gun, a lv3 with Machine gun and a lv2 with hand thrown weapon, your character's actual LV is 9. A character can reach lv 100+ (one of the trophies)The Max level for a character is 300, so lv100 for each weapon type.
Weapon Customization:
There are many different parts that you can add onto your weapon to make it a better weapon, these parts can be bought from vendors or you can ask a tinkerer to make the parts from different ingredients that you collect from enemies.
Map Traveling:
The game is set in a world where humans lives in a gigantic tower that is run by machines, so your environment is basically a tower, where there are elevators and stuff to move around different levels, at the same time the map is comprised with energy hexes, to be able to explore a new area, you will need to get energy hexes to unlock the map, there are regular energy hexes, and there are colored energy hexes, which will allow you to get to different areas.
Character appearances:
There are no armors in this game, but there are different costumes that you can buy or get for your characters, its quite a large selections, from head to toe, you can find something for your character, even the eye colors (they have eye color lenses) what is so amazing is that your in-game cut scenes and cinema animations will show what you have dressed your characters in. Which is quite fun, but I do have to say these items are quite expensive.
PROS:
1. Engaging combat system
2. Fun weapon Customization
3. Great selections of Characters' paper doll system (character appearances)
4. Good Voice Acting
CONS:
1. Visuals are only acceptable, could be a lot better.
2. It could be quite a grind sometimes to get your character's level up and unlocking the map
3. It has a steep learning curve for the combat system (but in the end its worth it)
4. Save points are not available to you all the time, in the beginning you can only save at your base, but later on there are energy station that you could buy to set a remote save point.
5. At times the constant combat could make you feel a bit frustrated, especially when you are fighting in a dungeon area.
Hope this help!
PS: This is only base on 10 hours of game play, I will say that the learning curve for the combat system is about an hour to get use to. There are a lot of information that you really need to learn first though.
PPS: Because its base on 10 hours of game play, I couldn't tell you much about the story line.