Having reached the 10 hour mark in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (after nearly waiting that long to get the game), I have found that the commentary made by GameSpot's review does not entirely do it justice in a couple of areas. While the review comments that you must level up in order to progress, as if it was something you had to go out of your way to do. I have found myself simply playing through and higher level than I need to be the first time through the Kirlsa Ruins. I can attribute this to the bonus battle system, where rewards like triple XP for just fighting well for multiple battles in a row get pretty silly and you find yourself 4-5 levels higher than you need to be to defeat a boss. The 'motionless' mouth comment makes me feel that the reviewer wasn't paying attention enough, as the mouth movement does exist, but the game uses an imperfect method of using the audio dialogue to determine mouth movement (of course, I could be wrong), which is great because the movement is always synced, but is bad because sometimes low volume causes weirdness. The stereo downmixing for dialogue isn't the best either, as it feels that characters facing away from the camera are quieter than they need to be.

Still, the battle system is rather superb. Quick and deadly, and rarely do battles form the same pattern after the first 1-2 hits. Definitely something I am sinking more time into over the next few weeks.