After reading some of the commentary on Amazon.com and "professional" websites, such as IGN, I've come to the conclusion that certain people shouldn't be allowed to review anything.
The biggest complaint that I've seen so far is that "this game doesn't deliver anything new or groundbreaking".
What kills me about this commentary is that nothing new or groundbreaking has existed in the RPG sphere since Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition for Pencil and Paper / Final Fantasy 7 for Videogames. Of COURSE you're not going to get anything that's groundbreaking - BECAUSE EVERYTHING HAS ALREADY BEEN DONE! Honestly, people who put that complaint in any review for RPGs should have their reviews immediately rejected.
In regards to storyline and feel - This game feels like Final Fantasy 7. I liked that game, and I liked the feel of the menu system and materia optimization.
Each character can gain the classes/skills of any other character, this is true, HOWEVER, certain characters have baseline states that are more agreeable with certain classes. Having said that, I want to remind all of the detractors out there this fact: These characters are KIDS. Kids should be relatively the same. They haven't "grown up" to "specialize" in any particular field of combat or knowledge. I like the idea of customizing my characters in this fashion. This level of customization also prevents what has become a standard level of accepted sexism and racism in many RPGs out today.
In regards to some complaints people have regarding leveling up, all I can say is they must be smoking something. It's exceedingly easy to level up characters. All you need to do is put on the "attract monsters" skill, run in circles, grab about 3-4 monster groups together and "fight all". It's that easy. The leveling certainly is not anywhere near as atrocious as Secret of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 3), nor Final Fantasy 7 (dear god, it took me 6 solid hours of game time of running around in circles with Knights of the Round just to be high enough level to face the final boss). I'm having NO WHERE NEAR that kind of issue in this game.
Yeah, this game is a bit easy if you start exp farming early on, I don't mind. If given a choice between a game full of Tonberrys and a game that's a bit easy, I'll take the "bit easy" game any day.
Again, that's only easy if you actually farm for exp before heading out. If you don't, there are several places where you'll get pimp slapped hard.
In regards to some people talking about slowdown - I didn't notice. I've got XBOX 360 Arcade Version, and I've noticed that a number of games where people complain about clipping issues or slowdown don't happen on my machine. I think it has to do with the fact my machine is not backward compatible with original XBOX games (unlike certain other models), and so I almost never experience that kind of problem.
Battle Music - yeah, ok, this needs some help, but I usually play with my sound down low so I don't notice it. The other music is just fine, however, so it's just a minor nit pick.
Map system - yeah, it could be tweaked a little more. Just a nit pick.
Inventory system - would've been nice for more sort options. Just a nit pick.
Now, I can see how some people who LOVE the recent RPGs on PS3 would dislike this game. Quite Frankly, a lot of the newer RPGs which give false claims about being groundbreaking have fallen flat on their butts from my perspective. So, there could be an RPG style preference there.
If you do enjoy any classic RPGs, if you enjoyed the play style of FF7, if you like DragonBall artwork, then grab this game, you won't be disappointed.
If you absolutely love Crisis Core and hate anything that came out before it, then you won't like this game.
If you're in love with RPGs, as long as they make sense, world exploration, simple but fun storylines, have some puzzles, don't pretend to be something they aren't, then grab this game.
If you only want the next big thing and don't care about just relaxing to a fun game... then stay away.
That's pretty much my review.
I love RPGs in general, although the newer ones have been putting me off lately (due to artwork and fail mechanics). This one didn't put me off at all.
I can't give half stars so I just gave 5 out of 5. My only detractions are the nit picks mentioned above.
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