I've missed a lot, myself...I gotta go back over again to see what I've missed from all of my older consoles.

No need to preach to the choir.
I'm pretty convinced that for those that liked ToS and thought it was the best in the series (some prefer the Destiny line), this is the best Tales Of. I'm part of this crowd, so I don't need convincing, I was convinced the first time I heard of it.

What I'm saying is that lots of people in these threads behave like they just discovered JRPG, so cannot be trusted. Same for reviewers that people recommend, but these are the same reviewers that gave the same scores to Eternal Sonata, when to a seasoned JRPG player, it was obvious that was not the case.
And the usual suspects in these threads overhyped ES despite that, and I called it on them on purpose, so I made my mind on their advice back then, like I've made my mind on reviewers years ago.

Now, this is still a must buy, but it's no more on the level I thought it was before (it was anime like, but it was a cutscene apparently). I'll add that having no japanese voices is a no-no too, and the console isn't region free. The sole game that could make me want to buy a XB360. But now I know the european version won't have japanese voices, and even worse, may contain english voices for every languages, like ToS. Too bad!
Enjoy your good JRPG, surely I think this should be GotY candidate.
This is a high profile title, I'll see if this changes anything on my thoughts about XB360 owners demographic.
This better sell well, there will be no excuses for bad sales of this title in NA.

Well, bad advertisment and all around crappy planning by Namdai couldn't have helped(Low stock, not shipped to wal mart or target, no special edition for local preorder) but your right, a game as awesome as this shouldn't be getting low sales.

58K is actually good for a Tales game.  ToD, ToE(or ToDII), and TotA never even hit 100K in the US from my understanding.  ToV will go pass the 100K mark and might even get past the 200K mark.

BTW, I still expect The Last Remnant and Star Ocean 4 to get better debuts in the US.

One is named Star Ocean, so its kind of a given for that one. As for both of them, I expect that they won't get rat-**** help from they're publishers when it comes to advertising them and whatnot.

Yeah man, I know. It's just that with your first post it seemed like you were flaming 360 fans, because of how you worded it. I actually had to re-read to not get the feeling that I was being talked down to. Now, if I had to re-read something to fully understand it, you can best bet that most people aren't gonna ever understand it. That's why I made that post after yours. I feel it clarifies your meaning as well as mine.

As for Japanese voices, the english va is actually really good, but the reason there was no japanese VA is obvious. This game has more voice work than any console jrpg I've ever played. There is no way they could fit a second dub on one disc. The option to turn off voice is available, but I recommend giving the english va a chance, if you ever play it. The VA is symphonia level, which means good.

You have a misconception that the game was all hand drawn anime. Yes, that would be awesome. However, remember, graphics mean very little in these games. That said, I hope one day there is a console and development team passionate enough to make such a game possible.

Yeah me also. It's hard being a diehard fan of something that's not as popular as you want it to be. Don't get me wrong. It's very empowering to have complete knowledge of a popular underground subculture, but games like Disgaea, Vesperia, and Abyss deserve better sales than they're ever gonna get.

I do wish the best of luck to TLR and SO4 though. I'll be, of course, playing both of those games.

Except Square-Enix actually advertise some of their RPGs unlike Namco.  In fact, SO3 had decent advertising(it shows in the 740K it sold in the US).

 Thats what I meant...rat-**** help is a bad thing. Normal help is good. I expect both of them (especially Star Ocean 4) to get great advertising.

TotA sold less than ToS in the USA? I didn't know that, I thought it sold more.
English VA is good for those for who it is their native language. I could accept it if it was in my native language, even if it was crappy.
But when it's not your native language and it's not even the native language of the game (especially when the original voices are japanese, who have true professional seiyuu that put to shame the others), I can't consider that a good thing, and I think it's stupid.
As for anime-like, I didn't think it was all anime, I thought the computer animation looked like anime. That's what people said when they saw it, but it doesn't behave like that at all when I look at it.