Will not appeal to everyone, but if you are willing to put the effort in, this is one outstanding game.
Square-Enix have taken a new direction with this game, while at the same time pilfering elements of the battle systems from almost every game they have ever made: The turn based system, and massive freedom of character dvelopment of the Final Fantasy games, (particularly number X), the strategy elements of the Final Fantasy Tactics games, and the 360 degrees free-for-all mash fest that the Star Ocean games can turn into. And the strange thing is that while the influences from all of those games are quite obvious, it still manages to befuddle you for quite a large portion of the game.
Enough about the battle system for now, i will come back to that later. onto storyline. yeah. The storyline is pretty much business as usual as far as SE games go. there is an evil overlord, who wants to take over the world, and i enlisting the aid of some massive and hideousely overpowered creature-things to do it. It happened in FFIX, X, various Star Ocean games, Drakengard, etc.
and, as per usual, you play as some floppy haired youth with a voice like nails on a chalkboard who somehow fixes the whole thing.
Once you have got over the sheer awfulness of the main protagonist's (whose name is, wait for it, Rush Sykes,) voice, though, you will begin to realise that actually, there has been a hell of a lot of effort put into this game's presentation. I have never played the PC version, and thus have no idea of it's graphics, but the Xbox version looks amazing. the vast cities, sprawling dungeons, and massive grasslands all look utterly spellbinding. at least they do qwhen they arent moving. you see, this game suffers from some of the worst slowdown i have ever witnessed within a videogame. this is especially true to the battle scenes, which stop and start every five seconds, and are bland as hell for the TEN seconds it takes for the textures to load. Installing this game to the 360's hard drive does seem to go some way towards solving this problem, but there is still far too much slowdown even then. But if you have a certain amount of patience, then this problem can be worked through, although it will annoy everyone who plays the game. however, as awful as it sounds, you will get used to it.
Back to the battle system itself then, and fortunately, after the bollocking i just gave this game in the last paragraph, this is where the game really comes into it's own. The battle system is the make-or-break point of nearly every RPG, and TLR really does hit the nail on the head. I like to think of it as kind of like an overly complicated game of chess. you move your parties of characters around the battlefield, chossing which monsters you would like to fight, which you would like to fight first, and how many you would like to take on at once. you then chosse whether to hold back, attack physically, magically bombard them, heal themselves, or whatnot. at the beginning of the game, you will find yourself wondering why there is almost no character customisation available, but that is the beauty of the game. you dont get a message every three battles telling you that your character has gone up a level, rather you just get subtle hints now and then that your characters may or may not be getting stronger. and the entire way your characters turn out depends on how you use them. depending on what weapon you are using, and what ways you are defeating your enemies, you will level up different attributes, learn different attacks, and build their own unique style. every now and then, you will meet completely over-the-top bosses that will really test your skill as a gamer, including one particular boss, that i will not reveal, that may well be the hardest videogame boss i have fought in years.
all in all then, this is a game that can be massively rewarding if you are willing to give it the time, but because of the long winded battle system, and obvious technical flaws, this can often be a difficult thing to do. So by all means try it out, but rent it before you buy it, as this is one hardcore game.