Honestly, after finishing the game once, it thought it was so f'ed up that I didn't want to restart a new game at all. If the changes made to the ending in this version are good, then I hope you guys that will buy the game will not be disgusted as much as I was after that horrible mess.

Man, I have to agree with Montana for once!

game is same as 360 version but has more content in quests music story and chars. i played the demo and go killed by the bird things in the forest. mabey i will pick it up after xmasit should be cheap by then, either way its better than 360 version but i doubt its gonna sell very well jus as 360 version didnt sell well. i wonder if namco made thier money back on this one? the most off putting thing was the button mashing battle scenes i jus dont like it, thats why i wont get tales of vesp on 360 it has a similar battle style in that u mash buttons

Even with all this said, I would still recommend it to any avid RPG fan.  It may be mediocre, but it didn't seem to have anything specifically and deal endingly wrong with and if I didn't play mediocre RPG's every once in a while then I couldn't call myself an avid RPG fan.

You see, the difference between Eternal Sonata and Tales of Vesperia is that one requires you to think about your next moves (are you fighting a flying type, or a ground type).

In Eternal Sonata, all you have to do is run to an enemy, mash the attack button (oh yeah, they screw the button placements at one point, sooo strategic and special, it's not even funny), press the special attack button, repeat with a few characters, wait for the enemy to attack, repeat... You might want to change your position between shadow or light though, but that's the only touch of strategy you'll find in the game.

In Tales of Vesperia, everything happens in realtime. You attack (normally 3 B button press at the beginning of the game), then you chain with an Arte, then you decide which advanced Arte you want to use, then you either Guard or Backstep, repeat. Make sure you don't get hit in the process, because chaining doesn't always work good when fighting tougher enemies, especially bosses. You'll want to get in a strategic position too (behind an enemy is better, not surrounded by 3 of its friends for example), so making use of the L-trigger to run freely in the field is also important. If your enemy is a ground type, you'll want to think about using an Arte that is good for these types of enemy. Also, if it's really small, you'll want to flick the stick down while doing your combo. It's pretty intuitive if you ask me, and it requires skills more than in Eternal Sonata.

But whatever man, if you consider Tales games to have a similar combat system to Eternal Sonata, you haven't played enough of them yet! o_O

The game looks very beautiful. Great music, but I don't like the battle system. I kept pressing triangle the whole time. Also that kid's voice with the gun is very annoying especially when he yells Fire blast. I'm skipping it.

See, this is why you've missed out.

Eternal Sonata isn't a button-masher...At least if you played it for any amount of time. The entire game (especially later on) revolves entirely around the usage of combos and harmony chains - massive chained attacks that do hundreds of thousands of points of damage per attack.

And beyond that, Tales of Vesperia is far less of a button masher. Tales of Vesperia is about as much of a button masher as Dead or Alive 4 is for a fighting game. Both are so insanely combo and intelligence driven, that I question if you'd understand it. Sufficive to say, a 30 hit combo that relies entirely on excellent timing and smart moves is what Tales of Vesperia demands you to do to have a shot at doing well in the game. It's impossible to play the game and get away with mashing the B button, as you'll die in 5 minutes.

Chalk up great gaming possibilities to someone that pigeonholes a game's first few minutes. You must have really hated cutscene-driven games like MGS and thought there was no game play involved :-p

The demo of the game I thought was very well done for a demo. I think it will give you a good impression on whether or not you like the game. It's what convinced me to buy the game and only a few games that I've been on the fence about had demos that did that.

I bought it and finished it on the 360 and enjoyed it quite a bit. The music & art style was very well done and the story even though it was very quirky towards the end held me through. I also enjoyed the battle & encounter system also.

I'm going through the encore play through right now and the game flaws are starting to bother me a bit more. The dungeon layouts are downright bad and it makes some of the areas really annoying to follow through. I've been using a guide for some of the achievements but if you don't like using a guide to get through a game I can see it being very frustrating for some. After this completion I'll probably resell the game because with all the qualities in the game I don't see myself ever going back and playing it again. Anyway it's a worthy pickup I think for most JRPG fans but I would suggest trying the demo beforehand before dropping full price on the game.

Awesome demo. Really long, gives you a good idea of what the game will play like. Not Final Fantasy by any means, but it's finally a reason to buy an actual PS3 game. My PS3 was getting lots of PS2 action for the last 9 months or so. Very happy that this is finally being released.

If you're interested I played both the 360 and PS3 demos and compared them. The 360 seems to have an extra 'bloom' filter which doesn't really change anything it can be seen as good or bad depending on your preference. PS3 version is darker which again, doesn't make it any better or worse, might have a higher contrast in the different settings cause of this. Good news is it's not a shoddy 360 port.

This part made me laugh. Good one.