It's average and yet unique, if that's possible.
-Crafiting of weapons and items
-Completely Real-Time
-Lunar Gauge sharing, adding strategy
-Lots of exploring to do
-A ton of side quests that can often distract you from the main quest
-Lack of random battles
-Skulls can converge into one big baddy instead of 4 individual battles, leading to more EXP
-4-Player Coop RPG with items that can be used in single player game
Slops:
-Crafting makes the in game economics Fable-ish in that you can abuse it to buy materials for high cost weapons for about 650 and sell the weapons back for 3000.
-Completely Real-Time
-Side quests aren't very exciting and aren't very rewarding late game
-Voice acting for 3 of the 4 main characters sucks
-No music in the overworld
-Requires that you know 4 people in your area who actually own PSPs to do full 4 player coops (finding another with the same game is hard enough)
-Story feels cloned at times
-Weapon durability
Gameplay:
Obviously this is where the game shines, it has a unique and yet great gameplay. The crafting mode is amazing and yet at the same time, a little bit overpowered in the terms of getting gold. However, you likely won't use much gold late game because you can just create all of your items. You also have the ability to create random items at will, without risking losing any components (unless you hit a successful recipe but fail to make it). If you generate a random item, you get the item AND the recipe for free. Additionally, with smaller items such as potions, if you use the character with the matching attribute, you will often time make a massive amount of potions. For instance, with around 50 herbs and spring waters and using Felis, you can make well over 200+ potions. How's that for sick?
Of course, when you're done making that new Lv. 90 weapon that does 200+ damage, you'll need something to test it out on. So, you get to go out into the overworld and fight against monsters. While the monsters themselves might be too weak for you, you can chase them around until the merge together to create a boss worthy of your new-found prowes. Of course, when I say worthy, I mean able to totally pwn you if you let it get too big, especially when you're so underleveled that you have a hard time against story bosses. Simply put, unless you are able to handle the average Black Skull, I wouldn't let the regular skulls near each other.
Speaking of skulls, the AI in the skulls is aggressive or cowardly, depending on how strong you are compared to them. Which means that if you could overpower them, they'll run and look for allies to merge with, but if you are about the same as them or weaker than them, they'll run towards you as soon as they see you. And you also have the double edge sword of no pause buttons and no menu safety, so if you're trying to heal your team between battles, pick a place where the skulls either can't see your or get to you.
And of course, the most important part is the Lunar gauge. You will soon notice in battle that you have no mana. Nor does you enemies or your allies for that matter. Instead, there is a community pool, aka the Lunar Gauge which is able to be drawn on by both friend and foe alike. This enables you to strategize to spam the weaker attacks to prevent a boss from using his sick overpowered spell or you can charge it up to mass more damage on weaker enemies. The strategy is a nice element.
The biggest downfall in gameplay is weapons durability, though the slow running comes in second. First things first, to balance out the overpowered crafting, you are given weapons that break after a limited amount of time. Furthermore, they don't take long sometimes to break, so you need to have about 5 spare weapons for each of your allies. This means wasting around 20 of your item slots for weapons. The next thing that you will notice outside of the lack of individual mana is just how friggin slow Lance runs. Thankfully however, you do eventually get warp points that take you between the towns to eliminate the amounts of running you have to do.
Another huge problem I have with the game is that the side quests are not very exciting for the most part and lack in the rewards department later in the game. You must talk to EVERY NPC to get every sidequest between every single story advancement. Not only that, but you'll be getting 2k g early game (Which is very nice) and still be getting 2k g later in the game (not so nice). You're rewards aren't as great, though you feel compelled to preform as many side quests as possible to get the +10 or more to your Lunar Gauge.
*phew* Finally finished with Gameplay. NEXT!
Graphics:
They are typical, nothing better than seen in games such as Kingdom of Paradise. That's not to say they are horrid, they just aren't the greatest things either. Don't expect to see too many sceenes like you saw with the intro. All in all, they are neither deserving, nor hated.
Sound:
I'm amazed that out of 4 main characters, only 1 sounds good. Voice acting on the others is rather horrid, which is sad because it detracts from the excellent Voice Acting of the NPCs (when you hear them of course). The biggest problem with this game is the lack of overworld Music. That is an amazing dissapointment and wouldn't have taken much more space or time to put some corney theme to match the area you're in. It would beat the craptastic sounds being just ambient and footsteps.
Value:
Overall, while the story is somewhat cloned, the sound horrid, and the Graphics average, this game still pans out as good because of the excellent gameplay. I would dare say that it's a great RPG underrated by some, and overrated by others.
All in all:
It's a solid game. What it lacks in story depth, sound, and various other minute details, it makes up for with great addictive gameplay.
Rent or Buy:
Rent or borrow first. From there, if you like it, then buy the game.