I bought Blue Dragon and Eternal Sonata at the same time and I ended putting ES away for a few months and coming back to it. The battle system is excellent. It keeps you engaged and you can't just button mash your way through battles. I loved the art style as well as the sound track of the game. Given the focus on Chopin, its not unexpected that the music is great but its worth mentioning.
Unfortunately where ES failed is the story. The story was awful. One point in the game, a leader of a certain country did something so inexplicably stupid that I damn near stopped playing the game. The other flaw is that the game in extremely linear and has only one real side quest. After finishing the game, I had no desire pick it up again. I may pick it up at some point to do some more achievements but more than likely it will sit in its case and go untouched. Part of the reason I'm looking so forward to Tales of Vesperia is because I'm hoping the game can take the best parts of ES, its excellent art and battle system, and combine them with an excellent story line/characters and some additional side quests to help with re-playability and depth.
