A game with amazing potential, which unfortunately fell short.
Graphic-wise, the game is beautiful. The sprites shy away from super-deformed and look pretty proportional for their size. The art direction is wonderful as well, attributing to the likability of characters through uniqueness. Character art is also wonderfully done, and you'll probably spend some time in the Status screen just looking at your characters, if you're anything like me. In a world quickly becoming saturated by 3D, I appreciate the effort that goes into traditional art and animation.
Unlike the typical cliche of saving a world, the protagonist's mission is actually to destroy it. Kyrie - the main character - has the power to destroy by turning everything around him, man and material, into sand; hence, the title of the game. As you play the game, Kyrie's conscience will gradually begin to weigh on him, though not for love of the world but rather love of a particular person. Said person happens to also be one of your party members. Unfortunately, it is this person who most wants Kyrie to bring ruin to the world.
Morte, the love interest in-question, absolutely despises the world, and considering the circumstances of human existance, this is understandable. Ferals rule the world with an iron fist, a sort of sentient animal breed (read: Furries) the majority of which are brutal. Humans are slaves to these Ferals, and though a few "Rex"es (Beast Lords, the higher powers) are considered to be good an benevolent masters, they still see themselves as the higher evolutionary being. Many humans are horribly mistreated, down to children who are worked to death in a field only to later be turned into fertilizer for the flowers. Brutal, isn't it?
The characters themselves are all very unique and interesting. Consider the unwilling protagonist, who is actually very meek and shy, so very unlike the "emo" heroes we've become accustomed to. Morte is one of the biggest tomboys I've ever seen. Your other party members all come with their own quirks as well, from a Gothic pistol-wielding Dragon lady, to a macho martial artist teddy bear.
Overall, the fun ends there. Playing the game is unfortunately not as fun as experiencing it.
The battle system is mostly typical for an turn-based RPG, though some notes have been taken from systems like Valkyrie Profile/Xenogears. In battle, you use the buttons (A,B,X,Y) to create combos from various attacks, spells and uses of items. The amount of attacks you get in a round depends on your Battle Points (BP) which thankfully are not shared between the whole party. Your BP however, is not stagnant. It both rises and lowers, seemingly without explanation. You may start one turn with three actions, and the next with one. You may start with one, attack, and suddenly gain three more attacks, or you may end your turn right there. It's unpredictable, and hurts your ability to tactically plan your battle; not that it's necessary (more on that later). BP has a pretty good chance of rising if your attacks do either high amounts of damage or form long combos. As you level, this becomes more of a non-issue.
Around level 20, you gain the ability to chain certain attacks together provided you've leveled them to 7. For a bit of explanation first, you gain CP in addition to EXP, the former allowing you to level your skills up. Pre-level 20, your skills cap at 6. At 20, they cap at 7, and when you get a skill to level 7 you are given two options to further strengthen them. One is to Fortify them, which makes their secondary effects stronger (Chain becomes an instant link to the next attack, Stun becomes a stronger stun, etc) and the other is to add 2 Customization Options. I'm unsure what the latter does, as choosing it has never actually changed my skills any. For that reason, I always go with Fortify.
While this adds interest to the system, allowing you to customize your characters, this isn't entirely a good thing for two reasons. The first is you're already rather powerful - something I'll touch on more later - and the second is the chain skills this creates. Your attacks typically come in two categories, a normal and a stronger one (Blow attacks). The normal attacks are the one that chain into each other, eventually linking all three attacks into one. This means that with just one BP use, you can use all three of your attacks at once, which usually end up with you getting more BP on top of that. Once you get these linked, there's no point in using any other skill, ever. They're powerful enough to take down everything and even mini-bosses on their own, and spamming them against bosses eventually leads to a super attack which is not only powerful, but hits everything on-screen. This is game-breaking for me, as with all the many skills you get, there's really no reason to use any of them ever again.
Which brings me to the biggest game breaker; Difficulty. Now, I'm told that the battle system was tweaked for US release because it was deemed ridiculously easy. If this is true, it's sad, as the game is already pathetically easy, so anything more would be almost unplayable. You will almost never take more than 1 damage from anything hitting you, including bosses, and later in the game you'll start seeing 0's. The only time this really changes is when a spell is used against you, and then MAYBE you'll see double digits. Maybe. Not that it matters, since in the rare event you find yourself low on hp, you'll have tons of healing items (they drop almost every battle, you'll never have to buy any) not to mention spells to fall back on. That's right, ~every~ party member comes with full-party healing spells. They're quite cheap in terms of mana-usage, too, and even without powering up they're often enough to bring you right back to full HP. Battles feel pointless, because nothing actually does any real damage to you. Not even the biggest bosses of the game, the Primal Lords.
As for the battles themselves, there are plenty to be had. The encounter rate is typical for a J-RPG, meaning very high. Every few steps you'll run into something. To top off the high encounter rate and pitiful ease, enemies have combos too. Frequently, their combos are twice yours, and they may even go 2-3 times to your one. Oh, and they ambush you! All. The. Time. This means many battles are preempted by a waiting game; waiting for everything to finish paper-cutting you so you can wave you hand, vaporize them and get on with the story. Now imagine going through this every few steps. It's a very boring, tedious process. So much so that the fun battle combo system grows repetitive, leaving you wishing for an Auto-Battle option.
Finally, the voice acting...My expectations are always quite low when it comes to voice acting, and justifiably so. While a few characters have fair voice-acting (Ri'ah, Taupy, "Wooly") overall it's a mediocre job. You've probably heard worse, but there's most definitely better. Morte in particular sounds forced and phony, and many of the Beast Lords have voices that don't quite fit with their looks. I would have rather had the original Japanese voices, with English subbing. This is mostly a matter of preference however; some dislike 'jibberish', and some like myself find it sounds pretty, even if you don't understand what they're saying. That is after all, the whole point to the subs.
Overall, I can't say I would recommend this game. Nothing new has been done to draw in a new audience, and while the older turn-based systems are still entertaining, "Sands of Destruction" manages to turn them into a bore. My advice is to watch the anime instead. While the game's extreme ease may appeal to younger and/or casual gamers, the majority of us will probably find ourselves watching TV while playing to pass the time.