This game had a lot of potential, but it feels like an unfinished game.
The Good: This game does have very good graphics, many of the characters are very well developed and look great. The many areas you will explore look amazing, with a lot of detail put into them.
Sadly that is the only thing that really stood out in this game, everything else is just average. The gameplay is exciting, but gets old fairly quick. Its an action-RPG, but there are only so many combos you can actually use, and halfway through the game it feels like your just smashing buttons and you get the same three combos.
The story was fairly average too. Im not saying the story was bad, but it didnt really pull me into the game either. You play as Capell, a flute player, who mistakenly looks like the Sigmund (the main character in the game) and he is thrown into battle with multiple characters as they destroy these chains that attach the earth and the moon together. The evil order of the chains group is using the moon to enhance their powers, so it up to Capell and the others to destroy the chains and to stop the Order of the Chains. The story is very basic nothing to amazing. There is a lot of dialouge between the characters, which creates some nice character development.
Speaking of characters, there are A LOT of them. There are between 20-30 characters in all. Which is a kind of good and bad thing. There are some battles where you have your main party of characters and then there are sub parties helping you also in some boss battles. This made some of the boss fights very awesome to see. Because it would the boss against 8 of your characters. But having so many characters was kind of a hassle. Buying armor and weapons was expensive to get for everyone, and eventually i only bought stuff for the 7 or 8 people i used the most. and some of the characters were named "secondary" characters, and they could never be in your main party. Also, you could only use Capell throughout the entire game, which i thought was unfair. It would've been cool to use Edward or Kristofer as your main character...but oh well.
Bad: The voice acting in this game is somewhat tolerable, but the mouths never match what they are saying. Its worse than watching a japanese movie dubbed in english. Even at important and cool parts in the game, the terrible voiceovers kinda ruined the big moments. I laughed sometimes because it was so bad. I honestly think it would've been better if they used text throughout the whole game. I know tons of good games where voiceovers arent used. (Final Fantasy IV-IX, Okami, Zelda). Also this game was way to short for an RPG. the first disc takes about 7 hours, and the second disc takes about 11 hours. Yes i beat the game in 18 hours. But not all of that is gameplay. There are many scenes between the characters that easily last ten minutes a piece. so really theres only about 15 hours of gameplay.
This game isnt the worst I've played, but its dissapointing when you know it could've been a lot better. They could've easily added extra places to visit to increase the length of the game, and they should've definitely got rid of the voiceovers or tried a lot harder to make them better. And they should've given more variety with the 20+ characters. they should've given you the opportunity to use each one if different dungeons. That would've made this game so much better for me. Again, this game is very average, nothing really spectacular. Check the bargain bin, its not really worth the $60.