OK, I just finished disk 1 so I'll give my thoughts so far.
The graphics aren't bad, they just aren't all that impressive, no major flaws though. 8/10
Music and sound is good, nothing special or spectacular. 8/10
Gameplay is pretty good, save some quirks and dumb stuff. 9/10
Story is pretty decent. 9/10
Controls are good, save some camera annoyances. 9/10
Overall, I would give this game a 8/10. First of all, I'm an completionist, so I try to go for ALL the achievements in a game. I know this game needs to be completed 3 or so times to get everything. The one thing that is upsetting is that there is no New Game +, it's not a huge deal, but it would have been nice. There is a lot of missable stuff, and in order to get a lot of the achievements, you have to satisfy certain requirements, usually during an event or boss battle. So if you miss it, you either have to restart at your last save, or just deal with the loss until your next play through.
Again, the game plays like Final Fantasy XII, so there are no random encounters, it's all real time, so if there's an enemy on the map, you can engage or avoid them at your own will. Another slightly annoying feature is the real time menu. Usually, when you go into the menu to heal up or equip new items, the game pauses and you can take your time setting yourself up. Not here. If you go into the menu on the map, you are open to attack by the enemy (who will usually get a Surprise Attack, a debuff that makes your whole party vulnerable to 100% critical hits or something like that.) So, if you want to open your menu, you best make sure there are no enemies around. Crafting is fun, but you can only craft with the people in your main party, if they are in your reserves, you have to move them into your main party. This doesn't seem like a big deal, but the only way to craft is on the world map, not in cities. And the only way to move your party members around is to be in a city, not on the world map. Basically, if you find an item to help you craft, but the person you want to craft with isn't in your main party, you have to hoof it all the way back to town and do some reconfiguring, leave the town, craft what you wanted, go back in, and switch your party again. It's just a lot of work. I guess that's the price of being able to make your own weapons, armor, potions, etc.
The voice acting is actually pretty good, with the exception of a few times where they sounds a little ridiculous. The one thing that bothered me was that you can tell they made absolutely no attempt to sync up the voices with the mouth movements. Usually when this happens, I am happy to switch the game language to Japanese with subtitles on. Unfortunately, like Star Ocean 4 (kay?) you're stuck with English. Although this isn't a HUGE deal, it just gets annoying listening to dialogue when the mouths aren't moving.
Alright, that's all I've gotta say for now, gonna pop in disc 2 and see what I get.!
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