Vesperia is one of my favorite 360 games. Let me show you a post about it, so you can see our opinions on this forum:

http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=41149

9.5/10 from me. I highly recommend it. If you like jrpgs, you'll love it, no exceptions. Also, owns LO, and is infinitely better than the, imo, terrible ES.

I've played and beaten IU, and I can say that it has one of the worse UIs and sloppiest gameplay mechanics I've seen in a long long time. The Story is decent (predicable but still decent), and the art design is pretty good. But the overall gameplay features are terrible and not user friendly at all.

There are alot of stuff in IU that are irrelevant and convoluted, the gameplay could have used ALOT of polish.

As for ToV, I'll play it very soon.

Can anyone truly enjoy anygame? maybe its all a illusion.

I enjoyed both games very much but I won't get them. (saving money for gears 2)

I played Tales of Vesperia and loved it. My second favorite tales games so far. I own IU but have yet to play it, so no comment, but I would still choose Tales of Vesperia.

I am going to personalize my suggestion based upon what I know of the original poster. I am going to gather that the original poster is not terribly familiar with the genre. To me that means that Infinite Undiscovery while it might not be the more popular choice it is probably the safer choice. What I mean by safer choice is regardless of previous experience the player can get the game. Perhaps not all of the game, but the player doesn't need to get all this game to enjoy this game.

The games combat design is about as rudimentary as it gets. We are talking largely one button combat, with no combat duration inventory management. Plus the game allows the player true world navigation. No fixed camera angles, and no artificial battle arenas. The combat is not restricting in any way. Further more the player does not have to trouble themselves with healing, or other stat mitigation. The systems AI will automatically do so through their party members. All the player needs to do at most is hit the heal me please button.

I think if the original poster was turned off by the demo of Tales the truth is most likely that they are not going to be able to stomach this game. I have met a few others myself included who just disliked just about everything about that demo. I suppose if someone really digs that style it might be the height of great, but if the concept just turns you off nothing can be done. That is why I am saying play it safe Infinite Undiscovery might not be the best, but its hard to imagine anyone finding the game utterly objectionable. In other words your very likely to play the game through to the end, have fun doing it, and thus get your moneys worth.

I would say before you try Tales do yourself a favor and pick up Eternal Sonata, because it too uses free roaming battle arenas. Better to spend twenty bucks finding out if they are your thing rather then sixty.

@Dodece

Good post, bra!
I'm going to try and play the demo again. I was just confused throughout the demo there was no map to speak of. I didn't know where to go. It was a lot of dead ends. And the dead ends would contain a chest and then a enemy to fight. I finally started messing with the battle system and was kinda confused. I didn't know whether I should accept it as a action/RPG or a standard/RPG. It was confusing. I would hit with the A button but I quickly found out it uses some special MP or something. Then I started hacking away using the B button and I found out it powers back up the MP so you can use your special attack (A button combo). So idk...I then saw the boss. And he completely thrashed the hell out of me.

The same thing happened when I played Eternal Sonata. Everything was confusing, until I actually dived into the demo to figure everything out. That boss in that game on the demo beat me 3 times. And I got pissed off. I then went through it for the 4 time and managed to get through with no problems.

I'm just going to try it again and see if its my cup of tea. If it is, then I will purchase Eternal Sonata first, since they are similar in a way. Or I might just pick up a used copy of Tales of Vesperia at a local Gamestop, and if I don't like it, just exchange it for another game. If I do, well I will keep it.

I was thinking to start Dragon Quest VIII on the PS2 or I might just buy Blue Dragon to hold my JRPG goodness in tact.

 Who's going to stop me?

how long does it take you to save up? with lunch money?