Its weird, but soon enough you'll like both Lymle and Welch. Lymle because she legitimately becomes a decent to good character( I know right?), and Welch because every single time you talk to her after about 1/4th of the game she makes a complete idiot of herself, and the characters on the Calnus aren't oblivious to it either, like so many JRPG characters are when it comes to really annoying characters. But don't plan on Welch becoming any less annoying, but simply funny in the idiotic sort of way, such as when you catch her reading pr0n magazines and she blames it on Edge for "neglecting" her, or whenever the projector messes up and Edge just keeps shutting her off in mid sentence :P

@pbroy: 108 hours already? Even with idle time that's still insane. Aren't you worried about RRoD? Anyway, I'm at 35 hours with about 7 of them being idle. Just finished up with Aeos and am supposed to go to En II but decided to mop up more quests/fill orders first. My characters are in the level 50-60 range (except Lymle, she's aggravating and as such, I refuse to use her).

Really enjoying the game thus far. The story's decent and keeps you interested. Absolutely love the combat system, very fun. The only battle I've struggled with was on Aeos (ambush,ambush,ambush), I died about 10 times, but other than that the game's not too challenging. Downsides for me are the cutscenes, not so much the content, but the length. A few of them have to be 25-30 minutes long and occasionally boring. Nice of them to have a synopsis if you decide to bail. Also, Lymle really does suck, 'kay? 100 times worse than 'The Shining' twins from Infinite Undiscovery, 'kay?

I haven't played Vesperia, yet, but would definitely rate SO4 above the other 360 jrpgs. Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon were good but had stretches where you really had to motivate yourself to continue on with the game. I haven't encountered that with SO4.

Alright im about 4 to 7 hours in the game (Yes im back from my vacation finally lol home sweet home) and so far WOW 200 dollars for the 360 solely for this game was WELL spent.

I gotta say they it feels odd... in a good and bad way compraed to "Till the end of Time" for the PS2.

Blindsides make the game really fun along with the hard-to-learn rush combos.

Theres way more combat and skills in TLH then TTEoT but it can sometimes feel really REALLY cheap or slugish, then again TTEoT had a bit of that aswell so no big deal.

As for the Graphics, there WONDERFUL, but i say TTEoT Uses more graphical power of the PS2 then what TLH does for the Xbox 360, it looks nice, but could have turned out FAR better. Also some textures (Mainly Land-Scapes) looks PS2 or PSP like, Hell i'd even say Icky Wii quality graphics YUCK!

But its far few and inbetween so its forgiven.

Also the Voice Acting is not to shabby, i only have Edge Reimi and Faize in my party ATM, and there all Decent, Well Edge is Great IMO, Reimi sounds...... i dunno just doesnt fit, and Faize sounds fruity, although i know whos voice acting for him and he does great work in anime and its refreshing to hear him voice act in a JRPG game.

As for the Art Style of the game...its Awesome... Yet i feel Infinte Undiscoverys Art-Style is far better in terms of realizim, i feel awkward once i get a half assed bonner from looking at Reimis ass for to long. :/

Oh and WTF is up with all the SHINEY HAIR, Really cool and all but DAMN you can hurt someone with that glare jeez.

Overall, this game is starting to Feel more like a Tweaked version of Till the end of Time each time i play it, and that in my case is a really, really Good thing, since imo Till the end of time was the 2nd best game on the PS2 (Valkryie Profile 2: Silmeria being Number 1 on my list which also was made by Tri-Ace.)

So long Story Short, im glad i choose this over Killzone 2, no regrets at all from a true Tri-Ace fan.

Is there a Seraphic Gate in this game by any chance? Since Tri-Ace games allways Have End game Quests to be done after you beat the normal Story mode.

At this point in time i give the game a 8 outta 10 which looks like it go to a 9 easy. :P

There's no Seraphic Gate like in IU, which was really the best thing in that game. Instead, there are 2 bonus end game dungeons, one with Gabriel and one with the Ethereal Queen. I loves me some bonus dungeons.

What tiles do you guys like to fill up on the bonus board?

When I first started, I was all about filling it with exp blocks. A blindside with Edge usually netted these easily.

Then I came across the SP block. It was kind of hard to get at first, but now I've got the timing right and can max it out easily. It takes a little longer than others to max out though. This is the tile I love the most. It makes maxing out skills and inventing items easy.

The fol blocks I curse to living hell when they land. They are lock cock blockers. Take up space with thier uselessness. They are so easy to mistakenly get. Kill 2 enemies at once.

When I first started I hated the hp/mp blocks just as much as the fol blocks. I've grown to love the hp/mp though. They are really helpful if you cast alot and save you from always using berries. I try to have at least 2 of these at all times. These are also easy to mistakenly get. Kill an enemy with a special.

So for right now the perfect mix for me is between 2-6 hp/mp blocks and max out the rest with SP blocks.

I try to concentrate on filling my board up with what I want first before going crazy on the battlefield. Once I get the board to my liking it's hard for me to turn off my 360. I don't want to lose my board. It also pains me when I need to reload an old save to max out monster data for bosses.

Now you know why 108 hours can easily be attained. Maintaining a perfect board is time consuming.

@eNamrah

I'm not scared. My room is like a freezer. My core is still alive, but the DVD drive is dead from Fable 2. NXE came a week too late to save it with HDD install. My Elite should be ok. The combination of close to zero degrees temp and HDD install should help.

@Seraphic_Sixaxis

The lack of over the top graphics helps the game from long load times, even withou HDD install.

The bonus board is awesome and makes you want to engage enemies more often rather then run by 'em. It also prevents unnecessary grinding. I like a lot of exp blocks (Edge with maxed out Critical hits does the trick), with a few HP/MP blocks (just spam Edge's stampede) thrown in. I went through all of the Purgatorium with 10 exp blocks. Double exp FTW! Helped me level up real fast, until I had my board broken in the boss battle. Also if you don't want to spend much time filling out your bonus board, just go back to Aeos or Lemuris (Van Elm Region) and fight weak enemies. You'll build it back to how you want it in 10 minutes. Run around, draw multiple enemies for ambushes and wipe them out for your SP blocks. Although I really don't need individual SP, I just use team SP to max out skills. If you're opening chests and doing quests/orders, you'll have more than enough team SP to max out.

I'm also glad that the graphics aren't so hyper as to cause long load times. I've got it installed to HDD, but I've heard that even running from disc the loads are pretty short. Much nicer this way, I think... and the graphics are quite nice as they are.

@badgenome: Yeah, the graphics are fine and clearly improved, especially the characters, over IU. Also, I'm on disc 2 and have gone back to places that were one disc 1, but it hasn't made me swap back to disc 1. So I'm guessing the rumored disc swapping simply isn't there, or only occurs when you get to disc 3 and have to occasionally swap back to disc 2 (during end game). Either way I don't think it's necessary to have more than 2 installed at one time, which is nice because I can only fit 2 discs on my 20gig. I loathe the sound of the running DVD drive.

@eNamrah: Good to hear the disc-swapping isn't as bad as it was made out to be, at least for the first couple of discs. I don't really mind it for the most part, but the way it was described was a little off-putting even to me.

Anybody know what the max level is for BEATS?. I figured it was 20, since it turned green. So what I did after maxing out each person's default BEAT is switch over to the other BEAT and maxed it out. After both BEATS are maxed out, I switch over to BEAT N. I really dont use rush mode at all, so the perks of individual BEATS don't matter to me. I'de rather have the combined stats of both.

@eNamrah

Yeah, thats what I've been doing, going to Aeos to max out my board. Harvesting and mining make it easy to gain quick SP. I just wish that you can skip the ship animations.