Lost Odyssey: replay

You start off as Kaim Argonar, an Immortal with 1000 years of memories he'd prefer to forget. A "Magic-Industrial Revolution" is in the midst of occurring, making the lives easier for the people of the world. This magic has always existed in people, but why is it suddenly so prevalent?
Lost Odyssey is in my top five RPGs and will probably remain there for a very long time. Lost Odyssey is an amazing game that was a little bit over-looked when it came out around the same time as Blue Dragon.
Visually, the environments are absolutely stunning to look at, and the characters are well-designed and don't have the "perfect face" look of FF characters (I mean, look at Gongora's eyebrows). Even the outfit designs for NPCs milling around, although repetitive, are so beautifully done. Combat is a little less spectacular with the same backgrounds depending on the dungeon area, but still fun to go through will all the customization of skills you can play around with. Immortals can learn skills from the mortals that are part of the party, making game play quite versatile and easy to switch around if you find things aren't really going you're way.
Audio-wise, the soundtrack is beautiful and filled with such emotion that fits every scene perfectly, especially the theme song for the dream sequences (I don't think I've gone through a dream with a dry eye). The voice work for each character is absolutely amazing, especially Jansen and Tolten: Jansen comes off as a totally cocky quasi-twat, Tolten is believable as an unexperienced ex-prince whose father just died and has no idea what to do with the rest of his life. Kaim is a main hero I can actually enjoy without being a Marty-Stu.
Combat game play was just a little difficult to get right the first time when I equipped a ring, and was unsure as how the right trigger should work. However, once you get it timed right, you'll be getting Perfects over and over. Assembling rings to get to the weak point of each enemy is a little tedious, but it's certainly very helpful in dealing lots of damage if you DO get a Perfect. You're also able to switch out equipment in the middle of combat to deal with each kind of enemy; also a little tedious scrolling through a huge list of stuff, but great for dealing with any unexpected curses or becoming petrified. It is turn-based combat, which people have called outdated, but what exactly is wrong with that? Real-time strategy seems to be the way to go nowadays, but I've never enjoyed it: it leaves little in planning and makes me feel more rushed to get things done than actually enjoying the game.
The story is quite solid and emotionally-involved; it has been criticized for being overused and uninspiring, but I don't hear of any other games with immortals from a parallel universe, whose mere presence upended everything normal and are basically making things easier for the bad guy and worse for everyone else. Sure, it's another "save the world" sort of business, but what RPG doesn't? The twist here is the characters themselves are the cause of what's going on.
Replaying this game a year later still leaves me with goosebumps and tears in my eyes, even though I know what's going to happen. It should certainly be given a chance.