A beautiful storytelling masterpiece

By judging the game's case it looks like just another japanese rpg, never really stood out from the game shelf, but from the reviews i read and recommendations from friends, i decided to buy the game... best decision i ever made.

The thing that makes this game so amazing is the plot and character development, every single character on your squad has it's own personality, talents and weaknesses, which show up in game as 'potentials' , which could take you to victory or make things harder for you, the potentials are related to the soldier's life and experience, which makes the characters ( even those who have no real participation in the story) that much more realistic and detailed.

The game itself starts of normally but interesting, every time you get farther into the game, the plot keeps developing beautifully and more interesting. Unlike most game plots nowadays which don't make you feel much emotion, this one made me feel every emotion under the sun, happiness, regret, hope, sadness, desperation, hopelessness, shock, etc. The game constantly made me emotional, be it happiness or sadness and etc, i even laughed, not many games can do this. It even deals with real world issues as racism and obviously war and the ways it affects everyone.

The actual gameplay is really fun, though it takes some time for it to grow on you. The battles play out in turns, like a tactical rpg like final fantasy tactics, but instead of moving on a square grid, you have free movement over the character, each class has it's own unique weapon and abilities, they are nicely balanced, battles require thinking strategically, and you can use different orders you acquire throughout the game, which ranges from snipers support, healing members and everything in between. Plus the missions are diverse and you're not doing the same thing in them. The only flaws i saw against the gameplay is when the characters would miss and basically screw you over, and the duration of some missions, which makes defeats soul crushing ( i stopped playing the game three different times for weeks and even a month or two thanks to that), but hey that's an rpg for you. Also sometimes enemies would waste game changing opportunities, but most of the times they fought smartly. You can level up, gaining new orders and potentials, plus there's a lot of different weapon and armor upgrades you can buy.

Sound :The music is quite good, enhances the situation at hand perfectly, the voice acting is quite good too, the voice actors made me believe what was happening on screen, there's also a japanese voice track for the purists or if you can't stand the voice syncing, which is notably off sometimes, but never bothered me. 9.5

Controls: The controls are precise enough and never too confusing and the like. 9.5

Graphics: The graphics are absolutely gorgeous, everything looks as if it was painted in a animated water color canvas, and that's just the in game graphics, there are cutscenes, which blur the line of 3d graphics and anime, wish i could explain it better, just watch the game in action and you'll get what i mean. 10

From start to finish the game is absolutely beautiful, the plot, the twists, the feeling you get from the game's story, i cried a quite a few times, laughed and so on and so forth, while witnessing the resolution of the game, my eyes were welling up with tears as the events unfolded, no spoilers here.

If you enjoy a great story and a fun and tactical rpg, you owe it to yourself to play this game, RPG of year 08 - 09 in my opinion.

10/10