I generally only play one world 'level' per gaming period, so done for the day having just beaten the first zone's boss, the dragon Belial. So thoughts so far...
Okay, as GH said, the game is very pretty. The gameplay is supposed to be set as storybooks that a little girl is reading (why is a little girl reading about war, death, and murder?!?). Basically, as you finish the game with a character you're supposed to unlock another character who tells the story from another perspective, revealing new things about what's happened and such, as I'm sure you know.
The characters don't show too much personality due to the lack of visual cues to show they're sad/happy/furious/etc, although the voice acting tries to make up for it. The japanese voice acting has a fair handle on the emotions they're supposed to be showing at least (the english voice acting is passable but not as good though). Still, our generation is a little spoiled at this point and gotten used to those visual cues we can get in real life interacting with others being available in a game. I don't think this is too bad a thing personally however, as my favorite games tend to be the old classics that don't even have the voice acting.
You start as Gwendolyn, the daughter of Odin who just inherited the spear of her 'nee-sama' (I don't know if she's supposed to be her real sister or just the japanese use to refer to someone older you're close with. The english translation uses a mention of sister though, so I'm inclined to think she is) after she dies. Gwendolyn wants to be loved by her daddy so she decideds to murder the fairies in his name (and boy she does a good job in my hands!) while the rest of Odin's army sits on their butts and watch Gwen go, go, go...
So that's basically the starting setting. You go through a tutorial on the system, then go chat with some of Odin's servants and army including a chance to start buying on stuff, yada, yada, yada. Anyhow, note that you can only equip -one- item at a time. You can switch between items at any time though, so don't let your being able to use only one at a time to stop you from buying stuff.
Once you're done with the buying and talking to people, you can enter the warzone, which is the first zone you have to fight through.
'Maps' consist of interconnecting little areas where you can fight the enemies, and the first time you enter you need to clear the zone of all of them. You get bonus items/money for finishing them off really fast, so try to do that when you can. Each area consists of a 2D circular battlefield, where if you move one way from your starting point, you'll eventually reach the same starting point. When you enter a zone for the first time, all exits shut off, including the one you came in through. You need to clear the level, at which time all exits become available, not just the one you came through.
You at one point will get a map, which will allow you to see which exits to take to get anywhere. In the map, you'll see that the battle regions look like a field, a blue B, or a purple B. A field means you'll be facing minions you have to wipe out. They'll have a number of stars by them to denote their difficulty. The more stars, the more minions you have to wipe out, and the more difficult they might be. A blue B denotes a mini-boss, usually including a few or one minion. Minions reapper a period afteryou wipe them out until you finish the mini-boss off. A purple B is the final zone's boss, again, same thing with minions as in the mini-boss areas.
Gameplay, again as GH says, takes some getting used to, worse for some others (like me). They're a bit different from what I'm used to, and I find myself pressing the wrong button on many occasions, especially since I've used nintendo systems forever and only just recently got a PS2 (Bah!!!!). It's supposed to be hard to mess up and do a command you don't want to because outside of the [] button being for killing and defending, each command requires two buttons being pressed in sequence, the X button the second to confirm the item use from O button, or special attack from
/\ button. Of course, being used to the A/B combination from nintendo where A is confirm and B is cancel, with the opposite being the case with X and O buttons which are in the same layout, you can imagine I go "FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!" manytimes, and no way to change button commands. If you're used to the PS2, this won't be a problem I'd think though, and for the most part, it's easy to get used to despite some oddities besides my brain being hardwired for that nintendo confirm/cancel.
One thing that you might find annoying is the cute sequence you have to go through to start your game. As soon as you load the game, you start of as a little girl entering an attic with a cat and a book (more books become available if you finish the game with each character, for a total of 5). You pick the cat up to view the drama scenes (Odin Sphere's version of FMVs), and the corresponding book to play as a character. It's cute, but having to go through it each time when you start with only one character available may annoy you. It hasn't annoyed me yet though outside of wondering why a little blonde girl is reading about war and war-related topics.
Oh, one thing you need to know. You're levelling up two things in this game. Your HP, which gets exp by consuming food which grands you both HP exp and heals you somewhat. You heal fully and raise your HP when you level it up. The second thing you can level is your psypher, which is basically your weapon. In the case of Gwendolyn, the magic spear she received from the dead Griselda. The psypher is a magic weapon that powers up by absorbing the souls of dead enemies (well, not really souls, but I'll call them that because that's what it looks like to me
).
One final thing. The game includes a 'home' and 'restart' command in the pause menu. Clicking 'restart' will allow you to leave a boss/mini-boss area and go level-up in other areas. Clicking home sends you to the start of the zone, and basically, lets you fight all over again. This is very important for one reason. The game's not easy. I had a bitch of a time fighting the first boss, Belial with HP at level 5 and no special attacks available. I had to eat a total of 5 breads (500HP) and one mulberry (only 20HP, but grands 70exp to your HP level) Another friend having used the home command to go through the zone a second time before going to fight the dragon and didn't take nearly as long or require more than two breads.
So keep in mind that the game encourages and in fact almost requires level grinding unless you possibly play in the easy mode (three levels of difficulty, default being medium). I'd imagine you actually might even need level grinding in easy mode.
Anyhow, I am enjoying it and the challenging aspects of it. It's not for everyone though, and for those who don't like level grinding in RPGs, you probably have no reason to go anywhere near this game.