Reviewers these day mostly expect godly graphic from RPG ,and seems many JRPG won't match their taste.

Well, the best-reviewed console WRPG of this year couldn't be said to have "godly" graphics, by any means.

I do think that advances in gaming technology have to some degree been the enemy of JRPGs, as it seems that Japanese developers, especially those working on "large-scale" games, have struggled with HD projects.  How much time should they spend trying to make their games look as "good" as the Western-developed games?  Should they focus more on the graphic design or the story and gameplay?  Many Western developers have more experience in PC development than their Japanese counterparts, which would give them an edge in managing projects under these kinds of demands.

Only one of the mentioned games is a X360 game - Tales of Vesperia. And is unfortunately not available in the EU yet. It's a hame that Namco did that, because Tales is the most polished *big* JRPG as of yet.

I would say that it is more a problem of narrative and experimentation with gameplay forms. JRPGs are stale. WRPGs are not.

Final Fantasy XIII, Versus XIII, and Star Ocean The Last Hope will have those "godly" graphics and arguably White Knight Chronicles as well. The real problem is that some of the JRPGs have technical issues, Lost Odyssey is a minor offender and The Last Remnant is apparently a huge offender.

I personally think Lost Odyssey deserves scores like 8 or 8.5 and not the 9.0 and 9.5 some JRPG fans are giving it.

My personal opinion of Lost Odyssey:

Pros

+Great(but not perfect) graphics

+Memorable characters

+Oringinal concept work for chacters is fantastic

+Suprisingly rewarding turn based battle system

+Great soundtrack and Solid VA

+Thousand Year Dreams

+Pretty good story...

Cons

-but it's no literary masterpiece

-pacing is slow for first half

-uninteresting villian

-in the latter half of the game, the battles can sometimes drag on for too long

-minor technical issues(nothing gamebreaking)

-some of the character models pale in comparison to Inoue's original concept work(again, nothing gamebreaking)

LO has some flaws that prevent it from deserving the praise other JRPG fans are giving but the strengths outweigh the flaws enough so that it doesn't completely ruin the experience for me.

I am pretty sure the "JRPGs are stale" thing was a misconception caused by the fact that alot of those cookie cutter JRPGs are from the big companies and not the super niche companies like Atlus and Nippon Ichi.

I wasn't aware that Atlus developed games. Or that any of the JRPGs they published had fresh narratives.

I don't think they are putting enough spread in their reviews. If LO and ToV are an 8 or 8.5. Infinite Undiscovery should be a 4.5 or 5 or 5.5.

It's hard to know what to buy, because the points aren't very different. They all score about the same +/- 1 or 1.5 points.

You clearly never heard of the Shin Megami Tensei series, Atlus's flagship RPG series

That's pretty fair, actually. I've heard of them, but I have yet to play them.

I own a PS2. Which one should I pick up?