It's a good battle system, my only gripes were the knockdown taking away time and lining things up can be a little hairy.

Your four commands are mapped to the four face buttons.  The main one you will be spamming is the attack button.  The more hits you land, the more time you get added to your turn and the more echoes you build up (starts at party level 2). 

You get special attacks which do a crapload of damage, can hit multiple enemies (and normal attacks can hit adjacent enemies too), and do more damage the more echoes you've built up.  These special attacks range from healing, to strong melee attacks, attacks that affect a group or line of enemies (and even one that affects enemies behind you), and strong ranged attacks.  The only limit on these is time so there's no point system and makes things pretty nice and simple.

Echoes build up by doing normal attacks and you get one at 4, 8, 12, 60, 24, 32 (or something close to that) and are used up once you use a special attack.  I could have swore the game said you don't get echoes from doing special attacks that do multiple hits, but you do.  

Your item key is bound to the X key and you get a certain item set that you set in the menu.  Pressing the LB or RB rotates through that set and it's pretty easy to use.  The only thing to watch out for is that it can take up time going through your item set.

There is a block button that gives you chance to block the insane amount of damage you can receive but some attacks are just impossible to block and you really just have to anticipate the attacks and even that isn't easy.  There are no misses, blocking just makes attacks do less damage.  I like the block system I just think it could have been done better.

At the beginning of the turn you get a tactical time (which starts as infinite) to give you time to plan out your next move.  During this time you can also rotate your item set without starting your actual turn.

Your actual turn lasts 5 seconds and that starts as soon as you do anything (move, attack, you character gets up) and this time can be increased slightly by doing normal attacks.  

 The game does do facing so that's always a concern.  If the enemy is behind you, you can press the block button which will turn you around but you will still get hit.

There are light and dark areas and yours and enemies abilities change depending on if you're in one of those areas.  Some enemies change into tougher enemies if they get into the dark, but I've only encountered one enemies that does that so far.  There are a good number of enemies that that can carry light or dark with them (by far, some dark orb, whatever) so that can change things up. 

All in all, it's a nice battle system that lets you do some nice strategy.  I have my gripes about it, but I still really like it.  There's a lot of button mashing when you're just attacking and building up echoes, but because of the time limits you're still paying attention to what's next and where you are. 

 It would have been nice if they at least made a picture of the same enemy worth less.  Now whenever I get to a boss I just make sure Beat is in my party and I just spam the camera on his first round.  I'm really curious to see what prices are like when I actually manage to find another shop (I still can't believe I'm 6-ish hours into the game and I've only encountered one shop).

Have you gotten the awesomeness that is Viola yet?  When you first get her she's pretty unbalanced but once you get Healing Arrow it's just like they wanted you to use her and nobody else. 

lol your stuck on the fort too t western? (i was stuck for a while) you have to hit all the switches, then theres a latter you cant really see, same with alot of things later in the game.

So far id give it a 8-9
Im a little bit farther then t west

highs:
-Good voice acting, it really is alot better then i thought it would be, beat is so danm cute and his voice is almost perfect
-Battle system is unique and is very fun at some areas
-There are alot of different characters, so far i have 9 to choose from (not all at one time 6 most at some times)
-Animation is gorous, and the music is some of the best ive heard
-decent storyline, so far i already have betrayal, and im maybe not even a 1/4 of the way through


Lows:
-like they said, ive taken so many pictures, im up to 30k gold, and items cost like 100 each, its way to easy with pictures, just do a round of pictures and your set for a while.
-To easy, so far its been WAY to easy, only one of the bosses has been kinda hard, and he was at the begining of the game. Ive heard though that it changes latter and becomes much harder sooo who knows
-Battle system gets a little bit boring, a little bit of a button masher at some points, but they keep adding new things, and new moves, so it isnt a big deal really.
-sometimes its too linear, which is ok, but then they add slight puzzles to linear games and ive never really liked that....

few minor for good and bad but i wont mention them

still a good game and if you are a jrpg good pick up

Thanks for the battle system info, always a big thing to me in RPG's.

 I'm glad to know I'm not the only one stuck on that damn fort.  Here I was thinking I would finally get to enter a town and spend some of my insane amounts of money and I enter one of the worst dungeons I've ever been in.  It's not that I don't know what to do, I know exactly what to do, it's just the place is so big and enemies keep respawning that I really hate the place.  Also, everyplace looks the same and because the camera moves more than 180 degrees you forget which side of the room you're on and have to kill even more of the same enemy over and over again.  

Just please tell me I'm getting to a town soon. 

hmm well you have to hit at least the first two switches, so the one in the first part of the fort. then go into the second one.

From there you should find a ladder down to go to another switch, a one on the right side of the room, not the left, which will change it so you can eventually get out

If yous till cant figure it out, ill try to go back to it (im quite a ways away though could take a while) and give you direct directions

My kids got stuck on that part also.  I finally have time to play on my savegame since I kinda watch what they were doing it was not hard for me to figure it out but I agree it is quite an annoying maze simply because it's really hard to see the whole picture.

 As for shop, there is a shop in Agogo also.  When I exit Agogo, I went back to it and do a little exploring.  One of the building has a shop in the basement.  The merchant was saying something along the line that he hardly have customers.

I agree, those pictures are really way unbalance, I have 30k + easily before I set out for the maze.  I also seens my kids stuck in there without any health items (they were understock anyway so if you are understock on those items you can easily get into a bind).  I always stock my party up before I go venture out (it's habit from playing all those old RPG games), but I totally overstock on those items since I have gold up the wazoo anyway.

Agree about Viola, my kids and I play co-op when I play (they control the other characters during battle) and Viola is way over power.  Her healing arrow heal everyone in range for 800+ while my healer (Polka) barely do that on one character.  And yep, none of my kids want to play Polka because she is just suck.  (So I ended up stuck with her usually to make sure her level up keep up with other.

It is a really different game than Blue Dragon , but I am more incline to load up Sonata than Blue Dragon at the moment mainly because I like Sonata co-op combat option.