Great graphics, great combat system, weak story, typical JRPG voice acting.
Graphics in this game are very good. Even with alot of explosions and particle effects going on, the game almost never slows down in combat yet continues to look very good.
The Combat system is fun to play around with. You can control any of your four party members during combat. Combat itself is in real time, you can open a flywheel style menu that pauses the game and allows you to pick from symbols (spells) items and other options. You're even able to swap out the selected char for any of your up to four reserve members. You can also set up to 3 special attacks to each of the two trigger buttons. Typically my fights revolve around just spamming special attacks. Not as boring as it may sound. The attacks are flashy, well animated and actually quite fun to watch.
The story is one of Star Ocean's weaker points. Often times you're left just scratching your head. Other major plot points are so obvious that if you've played many JRPGs you'll see some stuff coming. The dialogue is also often stretched out and just plain badly written. It is obvious that an editor was never allowed in the same room as this game's script. The story itself begins with mans first mission of exploration into space. You are a member of the crew of one of five space exploration craft. Needless to say things go wrong fairly quickly and keep going wrong.
That also brings up the game's voice acting. I won't say it's the worst I've heard, go watch some old episodes of Voltron and listen to Sven or the little guy's voice for the worst, but it can be bad. After playing the game, I wonder if William Shatner is really big in Japan. Kinda like Hasslehoff is in Germany. The characters in this game overact so badly that it almost becomes a comedy at times. Every time the game's protagonist (Edge Maverick) struck his heroic pose in front of a boss, I had to fight the urge to laugh out loud. Not to mention the fact that he comes off as extremely Emo (Google it). You spend the first half of the game searching for someone who would have made a much better protagonist. But, square loves to use this type of char as their main char. Could be worse, could be the kid from FF 12. All the characters aren't that bad. Some are actually likable and quite funny. It's unfortunate that most of them act as if they are preteens.
All in all, if you're a fan of rpgs, especially jrpgs, then I highly recommend you pick this game up. It does have it's faults, but there isn't really anything else out there on the new gen of consoles. It's been a year since we got Lost Odyssey. The Last Remnant was horribly bad, IMHO. This game and it's multiple play through and achievements should keep you busy. Expect anywhere between 35-60 hours for a play through. 80-100 if you're a completionist doing all the side quests/shop orders. You will definitely get plenty of play time out of this one.