I really like the story though.  Dont know why a lot of people are hating the story.  I admit some of the characters are annoying(and by some i mean Sarah) but its a nice story.  Love the ending.  Arumat is a fucking kick ass character.  I pwned Sataniel with him and Edge alone(Edge spamming celestial sword and arumat spamming bloodstorm revolution).  Another thing i loved was Myuria.  Shes a better caster than fukin sarah. And shes hot. 

My final party:

Edge(Fayt is still better) ETHEREAL BLAST SAYS IT ALL!!!!

Reimi(she is better than sophia, by a lot)

Myuria(best caster in the game imo)

Arumat(AKA Sephiroth)

I have a play time of about 25 hrs.  All my characters are lvl 63 atm.  Gonna go kick Gabriel Celestes ass like in SO3.  Have about 25 percent of the trophies.  Hopefully this game will have me playing it for 400+ hrs like SO3 did lol(which i doubt).  I would give it an 8.5 out of 10.  SO3 is still better.

23 hours play time? Did you skip everything? I had like 45 hours.

I liked the battle system. The combat is nice and fast paced and it keeps you involved, unlike the combat in White Knight Chronicles that put me to sleep because it was so slow and there was never any challenge.

I didn't like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrnV6kN-bxI#t=6m36s

I also didn't like the graphics, the art, the plot, the characters, the dialog, the voice work, the level design or the most annoying child character ever. I know I'm being harsh here but even though I enjoy a lot of the anime cliches out there, this game just pushed my buttons in the worst possible way.

I wish I could have enjoyed it. I'm desperate for some good JRPG lovin and I'm still trying to figure out what happened to the genre this generation when there was so much good stuff on the PS2.

I just checked it was 27 hrs.  And no i didnt skip anything really.  I watched like 80% of the cutscenes(some of them were straight up boring), i only did like 5% of the quests.  I guess i didnt try to overlevel my characters like my brother is doing right now(he just beat sahariel in lvl 47, i beat him in lvl 40).  What lvl were your characters wen you beat Sataniel?  Did you watch all the cutscenes and did all the quests?

I agree with you on the battle system in WKC.  Its boring most of the time. Reminds me of FFXII but FF didnt put to sleep like WKC, i really enjoyed its battle system.  And DAMN you practically didnt like the whole game except for the battle system lol.  Im guessing the child character your referring to is Lymle.  I loved her though shes funny, 'kay? lol.  And i agree that the ps3 is lacking the good JRPG's  the ps2 had.  Man SO3 was the second best RPG i have ever played.

If you go for all Battle Trophies have fun spending over 1000 hours. Killing 30,000 insects with pratically each character sucks big time.

And if you think Arumat is powerful now wait untill you get his Dragon Roar post game.

Holy fuck thats a lot of insects. Your right that is going to suck big time.  And I have seen Arumats Dragon Roar.  Where do i get the "super/unlearnable by leveling up moves for each character?  I read somewhere that im going to need the Darkness ring to open up the chests those moves are in.

I pretty much agree with this, though I'm actually thinking about buying TLHI if I ever see it in a bargain bin. The game was fun enough that I can see myself playing it over in the future, as long as I can skip all of the cutscenes and the unskippable ones are in a language that I don't understand.

Also, if you want some JPRG lovin, I suggest you get one of the handheld systems (if you don't have one already). The DS, for example, is getting Infinite Space and the next mainline Shin Megami Tensei game in March alone. Neither system touches the PS2 in terms of quantity, but they've each got some gems.