Because I don't like Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey?  To the contrary erhaps if I hadn't played so many JRPGs over the years I would have liked them more.  They were both below mediocre examples of the most tired and true traditions in JRPGs.  Blue Dragon was juvenile to the extreme, basic beyond belief in execution...I mean I found the combat system in the first two breath of fire games to be more advanced then the blue dragon system and those are well over a decade old.  Blue Dragon was a very poorly made game and a lot of reviews said as much.  I loved the original Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior when I played them 20 years ago at 5 years old, but I like to think things have advanced a bit story and gameplay wise, but in Blue Dragon that was no the case.

   Lost Odyssey wasn't as painfully flawed as Blue Dragon, it at least didn't look like a crappy episode of Dragon Ball Z, but it was just a horridly executed rip off of Final Fantasy X.  It had the turn based system and open skill progression but it was done wrong  in just about every way possible.

   The animation was horridly done, every character looked so stilted, my wife and I couldn't help but laugh out loud at some of the animation in scenes like the councils discussions, it was just comically bad which is not what a A list RPG should be.  On top of that the story broke little to no new ground (same kind of evil empire, same kind of intrigue, it was almost identical to at least 4 or 5 Final Fantasy stories.  I kept expecting to see Keifa pop up or Cid to join my team.  The only good thing about it was the writing of the interludes you found from time to time.  Other then that it was a sub par game in every way.  It even tried to steal the action based attack activation of a shadow hearts or Legend of Dragoon and did it worse...the game was just unforgivable crap, clearly mistwalker didn't take much of the talent from the FF team.

   It's not like I'm alone in thinking these things, I didn't see a whole lot of glowing reviews for either of those rather poor JRPGs.  This gen has just been piss poor for JRPGs overall on next gen consoles, I maintain the best JRPG of the last few years is persona 3.  

   I think having played a few hundred JRPGs from the NES era to today makes me a sufficient JRPG fan though, thanks.

Well I liked the game it is not great like Persona 3, I really would like to try out the PS3 version just to spot the differences myself.

the intro is a bit dif, there are a few new playable characters/outfits, the music/graphics are improved. Overall it isn't HUGELY different but it is noticeable. Kind of like the Bioshock port, decided improvements but its not a whole new game.

It's easily worth full price. You can get it for 55 from Fry's, sure its only a small drop but every little bit helps.

Surprised it got such high scores. I liked ES as a whole but it was pretty flawed. My main complaints were with the story and some of the dungeon designs were the downright terrible. Without a guide they would have become an exercise in frustration. The wonderful art style and music went a long way with me though. The story was original at least and hopefully some of the added content will help with some of the complaints from the 360 version. As it stands though I enjoyed most of the other RPGs I've played this gen more than ES.

I also think that this should have came out at budget price. Publishers aren't justified in asking full price for such a delayed release. Either do it simultaneous or don't expect us to dish out this kinda cash.

And I feel so ashamed about it, since I was salivating over this game for months, even going so far as to leave the website open in FF just to listen to the music.

I'm a horrible person.  ;_;

Oh well, it's ok. I don't have the cash to get it either.

Nice score, but I didn't like the demo. Everything is pretty much average except for the visuals.

What I have bolded are reasons why I don't think you're a JRPG fan, are JRPGs your favorite genre? You put tired and true is that a typo? Either way you are still complaining about a JRPG looking and playing too much like a JRPG, what did you expect FF12? If you disliked the art of Blue Dragon, I'm guessing you also didn't like Dragon Quest 8 art or Chrono Trigger? Animation for JRPGs? Traditionally JRPGs don't even have to have good graphics, a good example would be DQ7, looked like an NES game. Now to the battle system, yes they both have traditional battle engines, but of course it should be expected, Japan is an eastern country and eastern ideas tend to lean towards traditionalism than innovation.

I understand your gripes with the game and see how you could dislike it and am not saying your opinion is not valid, but it seems you wanted Blue Dragon and LO to become a different genre.