My impressions so far

- Combat is really fun and probably the best so far in this generation of jRPGs
- The lead character is alright in personality. Not someone I will be constantly pissed off at like Squall.
- The item creation system seems much more user-friendly than SO3 right now. Also, healing items are much more reasonably priced.
- The color palette is awesome. Environments are beautiful.

- Voice acting is not the best, but it's bearable. As an anime fan, I've seen better as well as worse.
- The story is good enough to keep me interested

- Character modeling is about PS2 level for NPC characters. Not great for playable characters either.
- The native resolution SUCKS if you are playing on an HDTV. It is VERY noticeable that it is sub-HD resolution.


That's about it so far.

Won't be getting here till Friday, I guess Ill pick it up alongside Killzone 2.

i have the game now aswell, along with IU and both star ocean psp titles. BUT... my xbox 360 is at my home, and im visting my folks for another 5 days... but i'll write my review on so4 soon, mrstick.

I play on sd and the text is pretty small. Honestly, they should have made it so text worked well on hd and sd tv. Also, the low load times are nice. No LO type loads here. Game is fun, battles rock and the bonusboard is pretty neat.Skill points being used for basically every type of skill (symbology, techs, item creation skills, etc) is nice imo.

I'm gonna disagree about character modeling. Its far better than ps2 level for playable characters. Smoother, more detail. And item creation is far more user friendly, not any of the " do i have to reset due to a fail" stuff that was in SO2.

Last quick impression so far, camera control sucks. When you change screens you can expect it to sometimes have a total shit angle. You can control the camera but even then sometimes you will have issues. Thats the only real complaint (text thing is not that bad, just a tad bit annoying)

I got the Japanese version the day it came out. Ive played the game 35 plus hours.

The game seemed to be lacking at first but with the on going story variety of playable characters and deep customization, the game has won me over.

The graphics could be better, and the story pacing is horrible. I think there was one part of the game where I went 2 hours without any real fighting because it was just cutscene, travel to next place, cutscene, more cutscenes and more cutscenes. I was getting annoyed a bit. i couldnt imagine having to put up with horrible voice acting on top of that. But the Japanese voice acting is fine, though Welch is horribly annoying. The slag should choke on her pointer stick.

Ill have to wait to finish the game but this could be my next number one JRPG of the 7th gen. Depending on how it ends it may edge out Lost Odyssey.

I'm interested in getting this, but I'll be waiting a little later down the line.

Got my copy today, so far I've put about 6 hours into it.

Pretty good so far, quite a bit different than 3.

I HATE Welch in this game, and I hate most of the writing, esp. where Lymle is concerned.

However, it's nice to have a Star Ocean game that actually lets you explore the star ocean. :P

Getting this together with KZ2 next week. Suddenly got held by having no $.....

I've only put 1.5 hours into this game so I only have limited impressions, but they have all been positive so far.

My favorite part has to be Reimi's bow line... "I'll be fine as long as I have this with me" (with a close-up of her rear and her bow in the middle of your screen). Too funny.

Battle system seems fun and has some depth to it (combos, flanks, special moves...); generally I can't wait till I can spend some more time with this game.

I played a couple of hours last night.

The first thing that I noticed when turning on the game was that the sound volume was pretty low. I had to crank my surround sound system a few notches over normal. The game is kind of lacking a surround presence that engulfs you. Most of the sound is coming from the front speakers. The only time I think I heard the surround speakers kick on was on the overhead map when I was running around. I would hear the buzzing of some enemies and maybe a waterfall. The sound engineers must have fallen asleep or something. I wanted a sound orgasm. Enough of that. Its kind of a pet peeve of mine when I need to crank my sound up.

The game is still awesome though. I love the fighting. Voice acting isn't bad. To me it sounds normal. The game is very fluid. Not choppy at all. Load times are quick. I didn't install game to HDD because I want to play really bad. Installed it before I went to bed. Will see how it compares when I get home later.