An incredibly disappointing, highly generic mess of a JRPG.
Visually, the game looks like an HD PS2 game with some enhanced textures here and there, some weak light and shadow work, a good draw distance, and a huge amount of shine, because apparently to make a proper JRPG these days everything must be shiny. It basically looks on par with Ninety-Nine Nights but with way less characters on screen, and to be honest, NNN's combat was much more entertaining despite being a hack n' slash. At least the combat looks really cool when you watch it, too bad it doesn't play that way.
The soundwork is nothing special. The soundtrack is pretty typical of JRPGs, epic and done with a symphony. It kicks in harder when you're in combat. That's good for the most part but it can get annoying when you're entering combat to kill one or two enemies. It's like having someone follow you with a cello and having them go nuts with it every time you step on a crack in the sidewalk. The voice acting is appreciated, but they did a pretty lousy job with it. Everything that comes out of these people's mouths is so corny and so badly written that it embarrasses me to play this game in public. On top of that, there's a ton of cut scenes where the characters talk, their mouths move and everything, but no sound comes out through the entire scene! That's just downright lazy.
The plot is incredibly horrible. On the box description it seemed fine, passable. Once you start playing though, and live through the plot, you realize how ridiculously stupid it is. You end up not caring about any of the characters at all because they're all annoying and unlikable. The game is pretty easy and never really offered me any challenge. The combat is so shallow and boring that I feel like I'm just zoning out and pressing X and B at times. The game really struggled to keep me interested. You can control your teammates and tell them what to do, but luckily the AI is good enough that they can handle themselves most of the time. The only real redeeming qualities to this game is that it isn't a glitchy mess, you get to ride a big red bear thing into battle, and it ends.
I was bitterly disappointed this time. Square Enix and Tri-Ace Really let me down, and I think I 've lost any respect I may have had left for Square Enix. I'll stick to MIstwalker for my JRPGs now, thank you very much.