Heh your the second person who's mind I read with the other being a mod so I gets brownie points :)

I picked it up yesterday, and played it now for 2 1/2 hours, I love it, I like it better the n FFXII so far, I don't know why people have complained about story and cutscenes, I live for them, and they're great, and it has good voice acting, it's fun so far, graphics are awesome. I don't think the loadtimes are that bad for all the complaints, unless they get worse later in the game, but honestly I like them, only because I bought the guide book and use the breaks to check it out, so it kind of works out.

It's very traditional with random battles and turnbased fights, but honestly there is nothing wrong with it, it works well here, some older titles had fewer checkpoints to save and a gazillion random battles and that is what killed it for me, but this seems to do that gameplay well, and the rings beefs up interaction during turnbased fights, plus the cinematography during the fights is quite nice.

I did wish though there was a first person camera view I could switch to(even if I had to stay stationary for it) just to get a better view of some things, the world is rich and detailed.

In the end it's exactly what I thought it would be, and more important it's exactly what I wanted it to be.

I wonder if this game had the name of "Final Fantasy" would it be getting so many low review scores...

Lightning - it wouldn't.

That was my argument about FFX. Personally, I don't really see much of a difference between Lost Odyssey and FFVIII-FFX-2.

The LOWEST main-line Final Fantasy rated was X-2, at 86.4%.

Was/is Lost Odyssey better than the piece of crap known as X-2? I tend to think so. Yet LO is 10% lower. How is that justifiable? Oblivion was all too similar of Morrowind, and could be argued that it was an inferior next-gen rehash of MW principles, yet it still garnered 92%+ average rankings. Was that fair for Oblivion? Sure. But why kill LO for the same reasoning?

there is little doubt that its because it lacks the FF name
No site in their right mind would put a 5/10 for a FF game if they want to retain respect.

This game so far is easily superior to 12 in every way

Blude dragon seemed too cute for me, the demo almost had me sleeping