I just picked up this game last night.  It included a free combination
audio-CD / CD-ROM with music from the game & other stuff; one cool thing
about this CD is that it's _transparent_.  The audio portion of the CD
seems pretty short though.

My super-initial first impression is one of relief; so far the
plot/characters are all very standard, but it's very playable and fun.
They seem to have taken the standard formula and gotten all the little
details right (well, mostly).

One _immensely_ great thing is that you can avoid random encounters,
because you can see them coming and try to run away / walk around them.
Random encounter are my #1 complaint about typical console RPGs; they
can just suck the fun right out of an otherwise good game.

Some random observations:

o The character graphics are quite good, they're sort of `semi
  cell-shaded,' with a typical anime style that will make lots of
  people happy (though some will perhaps find them excessively
  `shonen').

o The backgrounds are very pretty and smooth looking -- and fixed
  perspective.  When I first saw them, I briefly thought they were all
  basically painted backgrounds (like Square's PS1 RPGs), but in fact,
  they aren't, they're really 3D, just good enough to _look_ painted!
  When your character walks around, you can see all the objects in the
  background change perspective; the effect is very nice.

  Since they're using 3D backgrounds anyway, I wish they had gone the
  extra distance and added the ability to change the camera viewpoint,
  but I suppose that would require a fair amount of extra work (e.g.,
  they'd have to make sure everything looks right from all directions).

o There are lots of little nice touches to the interface, for instance,
  hitting the A button almost always aborts animations and the like
  (e.g before/after a battle).  Combined with very fast load times
  (rarely more than about 1/2 second), and the ability to avoid random
  encounters, this makes things very smooth and annoyance-free.

o There are no voices in `usual conversation,' but cut-scenes (which
  use the game engine) seem to be fully voiced.  The voice acting is
  just passable, though if you really hate it, you can turn it off
  (actually you can control like six different volumes [voices,
  effects, ...]).

o For importers:  No selectable furigana (like Z:WW) or parenthetical
  hiragana (like Skies of Arcadia), so brush up on that kanji!

Note that FF:CC actually shares many of the above advantages, but ToS
seems far more engaging, despite the stereotypical characters and plot
(so far!).

Ok, so the above is a pretty trivial review; anyway, ToS just feels
`right,' like a polished old-school RPG very tastefully updated to
current generation graphics.  I'm very glad I bought it (unlike FF:CC,
which seems sort of ... dull).

-Miles