For Square Enix standards, this sucks. And it's surprising it's the best RPG of the year according to Gamespot.
The item system is like a lot of RPG's, you start out with poor weapons and armor but fight enemies and gain Gold Pieces (thats what the money's called) and buy better and better equipment throughout the game and there's a lot of types of weapons you have swords, spears, boomerangs, clubs, axes, scythes, whips, knives, staffs, and bows and there are a total of four party members you recruit that are able to use three of those weapons.
There are four party members the main character is The Hero (doesn’t have a default name). Yangus, Jessica, and Angelo are the other party members. It a little annoying the the Hero doesn’t talk -- when people talk to him they don't say your name even when it's on the subtitles when the text says, "Where are we going John?" the characters voice will just say "Where are we going?"
The level up system is pretty simple (I don’t like that very much, if you do then good) once you end a battle you have to chose what you want to improve on, you can improve on your skill with a type of weapon or you can improve on learning spells and skills and get some stat boosts – that’s it, it’s not as good as games like Dark Cloud 2 or Final Fantasy games that are more interesting and deep.
One thing that is kind of interesting is the “Alchemy Pot” you can mix two or three items or weapons (just two if you have the first pot) and you get a stronger weapon or item. But some you will have to find those items some of them you can’t buy from a village.
The story isn’t great there’s only one villain in the game that isn’t meet and destroyed (like your regular bosses) and the voice acting isn’t good at all. I’d recommend this for younger people though since it's easy to learn.
There seems to be very little originality in it and the reason I think it’s the best RPG of the year is because there haven’t been that many good RPG’s out. 2005 had mostly good shooters.