[Clickme]

Yes, I got it on the Midnight Launch Party. I've been playing until my eyes bleed and I can say that it is worth every drop of blood.

I've been playing the "inferior" 360 version and I can say that all the claims of horribly degraded quality have been exaggerated. The games looks great on the 360. It's not Blu-ray, but it's still great quality.

Does it make my head asplode with awesome as prophesied by fans for the last three years? Of course not, but it's definitely worth the money I've spent. The combat is a little clumsy and a bit frustrating at first, but by the time Paradigms are introduces, you will have a good grasp of the basics, jsut in time to learn the real meat of the battle system.

The sound ranges from slightly annoying to lovely in terms of the various BGM scores, and the voice acting is better than the trailers made it look. That's not to say that some of the random quips don't get a bit old. If I have to hear Sazh complain that hes' "to old for this" jsut a few more times, I may let him just die in battle for a while.

The visuals, as I mentioned earlier, are indeed spectacular. THE ingame graphics truly rival the cinematic cutscenes, with very little noticeable difference.

Added to all of this is something VIII fans may recognize... The Datalog is comparable to the Information section of the Tutorial Sub-Menu in FFVIII. IT allows you to access info on various Histories and Myths, Locales, even the events leading up to hte game itself. There is even an Enemy Info section that works as an ingame beastary. On top of this is the Events section, which has the written summary of jsut about everything witnessed from the very beginning of the game till now. It can be used latter in the game to skim over a plot point you may have missed earlier and get caught up. It's also handy for jumping back into hte story if you were to leave the game for awhile.

Now I will give a small word abotu the Crystarium. IT is basically the next natural evolution of FFX's Sphere Grid. While this may annoy some, others will enjoy the level of customization allowed to players. Each character can build down various grids based on what Role they play, allowing you to build one character as a Ravager, while bringing another down the road of Medic. Now, while this may seem a bit constraining, you can build on each role independently OR you can invest CP into various roles at once. This means that you can have a character major in as a damage dealer, with the ability to fall back into a healing role should the need arise, unlike the FFX Sphere Grid which set you down a single Job Class per character.