Good little JRPG Junkies shouldn't be asking this question... I played SO3 for nearly 400 hours, thats how much potential content it has! and you make proud @ you playing SO2 Good JoB!

S02 was a good one too.

I still can't believe you haven't played Tales of the Abyss yet... :/

There are most definitely better roads to route your money to...

SO3 Pros:

-Fast Loadings. Like cartridge fast!
-Terrific battle system. It's fun, dood.
-Great graphics and music

Cons:

-Lameass story
-Characters that are even worse than the already terrible and hopelessly raped of its potential story.
-The invention system is hard to deal with, especilly without a strategy guide by your side
-Some enemies can be very cheap with MP kills. Then again, so can you.

I'm with Mirson on this. Get Devil Summoner/VP2!

edit: or Odin Sphere. It's nothing like Tales, but I absolutely love it!

Invention system is pretty easy I thought. S04s sucked compared to 3s.

@bolded

what? the very first few tries with it i created one of the best weapons for Fayt that i used for more than half of the game.

i think this Game is a must have if you like Action RPGs. The Story is great (could i call it a story twist? however, in the second half, you'll get certain informations about something, and this part really got me.. i thought 'WTF?!?! AWESOME!', and it keeps up from that point on, it gets more and more interresting. in the first half, the story isnt that great, but the presentation makes up for it - because every single Planet felt like a serious location, with even more serious Problems, even if they are just a small part of this game, they feel alive.)

combat feels slow even at higher levels was my problem with it, I'm a combat whore with Tales or SO type games and I've always liked the faster versions of those games while in combat.

edit: nm SO3, misread lol, combat is fine in that one.

In my opinion, SO2 was the pinnacle of the series and it just went downhill from there. SO3 has great gameplay, music and a extensive postgame, but everything else falls flat.

It's probably worth a buy only if you get it really cheap (like I did) and go into it without expecting to be drawn in by a good narrative and realisitc characters.

And when did you try that? What is the weapon, anyway?