Simply beautiful game in every sense.
I'm still on disc one and feel like I want this game to go on forever, so seeing that there are still 3 remaining discs to go through is great. I feel like savoring every little bit of this game -- the fights, the adventuring, the movie sequences, the dreams. Finding out about Kaim.
The movies and dialog are very well acted and performed. The dreams are text, but I don't feel like it's an overly amount of reading. I feel like reading the dreams is just an extension of the excellent story telling this game does. Let me tell you, the dreams are quite something too -- they will have your every emotion revealed.
The game play is your typical JRPG step-based fighting, but love how it's done in this game. There are abilities and skills to learn, and a ring system that is a nice touch. Some of the boss battles are a challenge, so you really have to think about your approach to being victorious. The little animations that are done by the player characters and non-player characters are nicely done. Along the way you will acquire items that will help you fight, heal and quest items that will help you perform side quests in the game, or help you acquire items from people.
One thing I wish this game could have had was a quest log, to log what side quest to do and the status. You have to make sure you talk to everyone in this game, or you might miss out on a dream or an item.
Overall, this is an excellent game. Apparently the Gamespot score of 7.5 is not reflective of the actual retail version. The version they reviewed was a development "debug" version of the game, and that's why they experienced long load times and other issues. Hopefully they will look into possibly changing their score, since in my opinion a 7.5 does not reflect the true quality of this game. Enjoy this game for all that it has to offer.