I really liked Emil. He tones down the whineyness as the game progresses. I know you're 12 hours in but you still have a ways to go.

But, yes, Tenebrae is absolutely amazing.

Alright, I'm still looking forward to be playing this game (when it finally arrives in Europe...)

How good is it compared to the original?

not as good, but still lots of fun. I posted a few complaints in another thread, but no huge ones.

The fighting is just as good, but you can only use Emil and Marta as your main characters (you can control the others, but you have to hit menu and then switch ever fight you enter)

No overworld is a bit of a bummer, but no big deal. For US$36 it is worth every penny. Hopefully you europeans get a similar price right from the beginning.

I don't think we will get it cheaper than other games, at least not here in Switzerland, but that's not such a big deal to me. Fine, I'm glad it's no letdown. Overworld would have been nice, but Baten Kaitos and others have worked good without one, so I don't think that will bother me.
For the fighting, I always went to battle with Lloyd in ToS, so this won't bother me either. It sounds annoying though if you want to fight with other characters.

The battle system is better than the original. I actually like the battle system in ToS2 better than Vesperia's system. Overall the game isn't as good as the original but if you like ToS1, I'm sure you'll enjoy this one.

ToS2 reuses a lot of the environments form the original game and they show their age. The new environments in the game have better texture quality that the older ones brought over from ToS1. Some people complained about the change in art style but I think it suits the game better. The characters are less super deformed than in ToS1 and while they aren't cell shaded they still maintain their original look and feel. To be honest the character models in ToS2 look more like the animated cutscenes in the original game. In original game the animated scenes featured characters with more realistic proportions while the in game models were slightly SD. That isn't the case in ToS2.

I'm not sure how the game will be localized in Europe but in the US version the game has a ton of voice. More than the original ToS and maybe even more than Tales of Vesperia. The additional voice really makes the skits more enjoyable. The skits annoyed me in the original ToS but in ToS2 and ToV the voice overs doing the skits makes them a lot more fun. Specially when Tenebrae is envolved. He is my favorite character in the game by far.

The monster hunting is what I thought would annoy me most about the game before I played it. It's actually not bad. True I'd rather have humanoid characters filling out my battle party but leveling and evolving the monsters can be fun. For example, I got a wolf very early in the game and I've evolved him a few times. His last evolution turned him into Fenrir which has really nice character model. Instead of cooking for your characters, you cook for your monsters and depending on the recipe it strengthen or lower your relationship with them. Its obvious which recipes are good for them though. So don't worry about picking the wrong one by mistake.

I do have some other issues with the game. The first is with the returning cast. They are level and equipment locked. You cannot level them and you cannot change their equipment. This was and is disappointing. The lack of new playable characters. Outside of Emil and Marta, you are pretty going to have monsters or level locked ToS1 in your other two slots. This may change but given structure of the game I doubt it. I like Richter's character. He is around a lot in the game but outside of a few brief battles he doesn't seem to join up with you much. Granted this could change as I haven't completed the game yet. I'm only up to chapter 4. I'm around 17 hours in. Which is about the halfway point if what I've heard about the games length is true.

Overall, if you liked the original pick it up. You'll get to see what happened to the Sylvarant and Teth'ella after they were joined. The game is solid but not spectacular. Given the limited budget and low tier development team the game came out great. If this game had the budget that Vesperia had, who knows how it would have turned out.

Alright, thanks a lot for those impressions, I'll definitely pick up the game.

Having completed the game once you know the full story of Emil you'll kinda understand why he's a difficult character to look at so primitively. Can't give anything away of course, but there are reasons why he seems to be devoid of the usual characteristics and growth.

I've pretty much figured out that something is up with Emil. Raine has too from what I gathered.

I finished the game Zucas. What I suspected about Emil turned out to be true. Still think he is an awful lead character though. He takes far too long to assert himself, pretty much doesn't do so tell the game ends.

Emil castagnier??? What a stupid name!