Quirky, but worth it
As such it sat on the shelf unplayed for a few weeks as I tried to wash the taste of Lost Odyssey out of my mouth... those weeks were wasted.
If you can get past the child like graphics, and don't care that you never find out just why Shu "Won't Give Up" you'll find a decent game, a game obsessed with Poo (whether it be fighting it or searching through it), but a decent game.
There's plenty of variety in what you fight, and they've tried to do away with the horrible tendancy of RPG's where every side mission is a "fetch me this" job that soon becomes repetitive.
The shadows you and your team are gifted can get a little samey after a few hundred fights, and the game covers almost every JRPG cliche there is (annoying characters, love story, battle poses, vicotru pose, fight a team member, impossible battles) but its those same annoying little gameplay elements that make the genre so sucessful... you know what you're going to get when you buy an RPG... and this doesn't disappoint.
The score would have been lower had it not been for the music which plays during major battles, as a fan of 70's and 80's Rock I thought it sounded very reminiscent of Deep Purple (one of my favourite bands)... and there, in the closing credits was the reason... "Vocals... Ian Gillen" lead singer of said band for the best part of 20 years, if not longer... worth an extra .5 in my book.