Great characters, refined tuning of a classic gameplay style, and a beautiful world that takes you in. A must play!
Okay, so it's an almost but not quite by the books Japanese RPG. I say that because you'll find all the staples of your typical Japanese RPG. Hero out to save the world? Check. Turn based battles? Check. Random battle sequences? Check. The good news? It adds a lot of refinements to the system, allowing for a great balance of nostalgic JRPG with a breath of fresh air.
The fresh air mostly comes from the heavy refinement of the battle and skill system. While it's not revolutionary (you'll still select battle commands, with usual attack, defend, item, magic, etc.), it definitely adds enough improvement in enough areas to keep you always improving and intrigued, and improvising strategies against the pretty clever enemy. To start, you have two different types of characters: Immortals and Humans. In any given battle, you can have a combination of up to five. You can put the five characters in to a formation. The formation allows you to have a Guard wall, which can drastically reduce the damage received by the party members in the back. The more characters you have up front, the stronger the wall, but the more damage the front takes, the weaker your wall becomes and more easily damaged your back row will be. Balancing the formation becomes key in protecting the weaker members of your party (health wise) so they can provide support and magics.
One of the main differences between the two is that Immortals will actually revive themselves after so many turns, no matter how many times they die, while a mortal must be revived by an item or magic. Another is how the learn their skills- A mortal learns skills by leveling up, while an Immortal learns skills by earning SP points from battles, that allow them to learn skills and magics from either equipment or from "linking" to skills known by mortals, which encourages using all of your characters on a regular basis.
Last but not least with the battle system, there are "rings". These provide different boosts (including extra damage, elemental damage, damage against certain enemy types, stealing items, absorbing health, etc) when the activated during the battle. When a character performs a regular attack, a circle appears on the screen, with another circle rapidly decreasing in size until they overlap. The idea is to try and pull the trigger when they exactly overlap to pull off either a "good" or "perfect" attack, increasing the effectiveness of the ring.
In regards to the story, the story itself is pretty good, with the typical plot twists and personal challenges and saving the world you'll find in most well regarded JRPG's. This game goes an extra mile in two ways, one with character development, and the other with presentation.
The characters are developed by using in game actions, cutscenes and dreams. And I must stress this, there are a LOT of all of them (especially dreams, although these can be skipped- however I recommend reading the dreams that appear in key events of the plot). This is very much a story centric game, with incredible detail and effort put in to the characters design, stories, backgrounds, and motivations. And the payload is incredible. By the end of the story, you will know come to really understand each and every character, and what lead them to where they are now, and why they are even involved at all. Every single one has a reason, and the player is pulled in to caring about every character. There are very few games that pay such attention to detail to breathing life and sustainability to their characters.
So after having spent so much time praising the game, there is one drawback, that while is annoyance, just barely stops the game from getting a perfect score. While the game is absolutely gorgeous (and I mean gorgeous, from the environments, to the enemies, to the cutscenes), the game suffers from constant struggles with the framerate. Once in a while is okay, but unfortunately it occurs just a little too frequently. Much of this can be alleviated by installing each disc to the 360's hard drive, but that shouldn't be needed on a console that sells arcade (units without hard drives) versions of the console. While none of them are showstoppers, they can have the ability to jar yourself back to reality after having been being pulled so deep in to the game.
All in all, the game is beautiful, fun, refined, and easily one of the best RPG's (and probably THE best JRPG) on the system, and is a must pickup for any fan of the genre. Despite the graphical slowdowns occuring just a tad bit too often, the occasional annoyance can be overlooked in favor the epic. This is a must play!