I will wait better for western reviews ....Famitsu isnt very reliable.To make a comparision Blue Dragon received a 37/40 (nearly the same) and in the occidental press didnt manage more that mid 70s at best.Plus being from Square I am pretty sure they are biased .

But I hope its a good game ,I am looking for it on my PS3.

I'm not so sure about Famitsu, they give a lot of games brownie points for just being JRPGs it seems. For example Blue Dragon was not horrificly bad, but it was no more then the 6 or 7 most non Famitsu reviews gave it. Even a poorly executed JRPG is given points just for trying. I mean Does anyone who has played both REALLY think that Oblivion was only one point better then Blue Dragon? I think the differential of Oblivion getting mid 9s and Blue Dragon getting a bunch of high 6s was much closer to reality.

I am inclined to believe the OXM review more then this one as a result. This isn't because its on 360 first or anything, after all its coming to PS3 and PC so if anything it would be a feather in the cap of the increasingly good PS3 library as well. There are two reasons I expect it to be bad.

A) Every next gen Square Enix has gone between bad (Infinate Undiscovery) and awful (project Slipheed) so I don't exactly expect great things from Wada and co. Whatever magic they had back 5+ years ago when they pushed out A list RPGs like there was no tomorrow is long gone in my mind until they prove otherwise, which they haven't managed in 5 years.

B) I find western reviewers to be much more in line with my tastes to be honest, and also much more honest about game quality. Some people talk about a Western Reviewer tax where Western Reviewers are more harsh on JRPGs then shooters, but I don't think that is the case. Look at the review for Haze for instance, it was a half decent game and got butchered, ditto for a lot of other 2nd tier FPSes. It isn't that shooters are given an easier time, its that shooters are more profitable and thus bigger companies with bigger budgets and more QA make them. Hundreds of people worked to make 9+ shooters like Bioshock, COD4 and Resistance 2 as good as they are. It's not some bias, those games REALLY are that good.

Also Western reviewers are perfectly happy to give high 9s and even 10s to games that live up to the high bar set by other genres. Oblivion got high 9s, ditto for Fallout 3; even on the JRPG side I didn't see any calls of bias when FFX got a slew of 10s as did FF XII in some places. Valk Chronicles had no problem pulling in low to mid 9s from a ton of Western reviewers as did Persona 3.

It isn't that Western reviewers are unwilling to give credit where credit is due, the discrepancy between Famitsu and Western reviewers comes from Famitsu being willing to give credit where it is certainly NOT due ala Blue Dragon. I mean seriously, does anyone in their right mind think its better then Tales? Come on.

As to Zen saying that the FF series is the pinacle of RPGs I would say the best PS2 RPG was Shadow Hearts Covenant and the best PS1 RPG was Xenogears (yes I liked that even more then FFVII, it was not just the best RPG, it was EASILY the best RPG). I know Shadow Hearts Covenant is kind of a dark horse, but it was a REALLY REALLY good game with terrific characters and a very unique setting (pre WW1 Europe). It was a low 9s rated game, but I think it really deserved far better then even FFX's 9.3ish avg.

Another contender for best PS2 game is Dark Cloud 2 and another equal to the FF games in my mind is the vastly underrated Legend of Dragoon which was doing active battle engagement long before it was trendy. Anyway there are at least 10 games that I think are on par or better then the FF series (even as far back as the SNES I would argue Breath of Fire 2 or Super Mario RPG were the best RPGs, yes even better then 6). I mean I love the FF series, and in total it IS still the best RPG series out there, but individually the games are not always the best available vs other one off games or shorter series.

  I would agree that MOST FF games are AA.  2, 3, 5, and 9 were really not in my mind, 8 probably was but I couldn't get past how much I hated the main character and his Emo attitude.  That still puts FF above 50% though which is better then any other 4+ game RPG series I can think of.

i disagree with a lot of famitsu reviews *coughFFXIIcoughNintendogscough*

but i think they'll be right with this one

   That isn't always true, in this case the only people who would defame it based just on the system argument are Wii fans without a PC which is what...10% of the VG charts audience?   It's coming out everywhere more or less, there are a lot of reasons to doubt Famitsu other then console loyalty just as there are a lot of reasons to doubt that the Wadarific new Square can put out anything that isn't at least 50% crap.

@Impuslsivity (you've got a funky name there..) you do know Square only published those titles and they were developed Tri-Ace and Game Arts. Besides that, you've got some good points.

However, I do feel that Western reviewers and the western audience in general look at JRPGs differently. The amount of RPGs released only in Japan are massive compared to JRPGs released in the west, and only the JRPGs that are really up there, or are backed by a big company ever get to make it here in the west. We can also take this same example and do it vice versa. Amount of shooters in the west outnumber shooters released in Japan. I'm not saying either side is biased (well technically they are) but that there is definitely a difference in gaming taste and desire between the two, which would lead to differences in reviews.

Persona 3 is good, but it has early pacing issues. Besides that, yeah, Persona 3 is a really good game. I wish they coulda upped the production values a little bit, and I'd give it AAA myself. It, along with Tales of Vesperia, are my two favorite jrpgs since FFXII.

The graphics were sufficient in P3.  Persona 3 was made by a small company who wouldn't have the budget to have FF-level graphics.

Oh, I know that.

Still, it's a flaw. Also, not enough Voice Acting, and the dungeon is repetitive, but like I said, it's a great game.

persona 3 is awesome what you guys talking about o

Lost Odyssey: 33/40

No. Its was higher, i remember