A great JRPG. No, a fantastic JRPG and quite frankly, a bit underrated in my opinion.
The game is set in a world similar to that of Final Fantasy X. It's old fashioned, but slightly modern. The game starts in a battle field. A war between two sides where one side absolutley destroying the other. Just when it looks like one side is losing, in comes Kaim (The main character) and absolutley tears into the ememy, showing just why this guy is a badass! Two battles later, a meteor strikes the battle field and wipes it clean. Every soldier is dead all except... Kaim. He hasn't got a scratch on him. On returning to a city, the council suspect that the meteor has something to do with a machine called "Grand Staff" so Kaim is asked to investigate. Not before we run into two other characters who manage to become part of the mission, too. There's plenty of side stories and side quests that add to the story. The main side story here is that Kaim and some other characters in the game are 'Immortals'. Which means something happened to them, they can't die but they completley forgot everything about themselves and their life. Throughout the game Kaim (mainly, anyway) begins remembering and minging in with the main story it also begins to give Kaim a personality.
The characters are very well mixed. There's Kaim who's got virtually no personality at the start, but as he remembers be begins to care, talk more and show more emotion. Seth is, in general, a happy and strong woman and quite bubbly. Jansen is a manwhore and quite the idiot, but his humour constantly makes you laugh. Cooke and Mack are two kids, Cooke is the more bossy one while Mack is the more childish one. Both of them are influenced very easily as you'll see around disc 1 and 2. There's more characters later on in the game but, to be honest, the game doesnt manage to keep the later characters interesting as after you get Cooke and Mack the ones you get later are fairly boring.
The story in general is amazing, though. It's hard to explain how good the plot is (or how boring the later characters are) without giving anything away. Figuring everything out for yourself is really one of the best parts of playing a Japanese RPG (and Lost Odyssey especially).
Of course, a good story is not enough reason to buy a game. The gameplay's gotta do it's part, too. This is typical JRPG stuff, you explore, go to cities/villages, buy new weapons. Eventually getting a ship you can go around the world map. There's all that stuff you can expect out of every JRPG. The battle system is pretty old school only offering you a small minor new feature. The Ring system, you make Rings through items you collect. When you equip a ring, a normal physical attack will set a character running towards an enemy and a small black circle will be around it. You have to hold the right trigger and a bigger circle will get smaller eventually becoming in line with the smaller black circle around the enemy, when you think it's perfect timing you must let go of the right trigger. You can either get 'Bad', 'Good' or 'Perfect'. Obviously, good and perfect will increase your attack power.
Another thing unique to Lost Odyssey is the Skill Link system. Only the Immortals can use it. They can't 'learn' skills and magic like the other characters do, they have to skill link to a skill they want to learn with a mortal character who has it, and be in the same battle as that mortal until the immortal learns it.
Also, on a side-note, this game is much better than Blue Dragon. It's got a far better plot, much better characters and the main thing; When you're exploring in Lost Odyssey. You don't have to search every pipe, rock, sandback, large stone, chair, knut, bolt, screw or peice of golden machinery that's in the game. No, the item will either be shining, in a pot or in a treasure chest. Infact, sometimes in the game it even has you just RUN THROUGH a crate to get an item, not stop and press A. Whoever thought that having us explore every inch of a room (or worse, desert) in Blue Dragon would work well, should be shot.
As I've said before, the game does have a Final Fantasy X kinda look to it. The caves and cities, while beautiful, aren't anything you could stare at for ages without blinking. Every city and village is fairly hit and miss but never bland.
So, to sum it all up: Lost Odyssey is almost the perfect JRPG. It's got amazing characters (mostly), a plot to beat any other this year, old school gameplay with enough depth and new features to keep you interested and environments that (mostly) are seriously awesome eye candy. If you didn't like Blue Dragon, this is your alternative. And what a damn fine one it is, too.