I find that on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd only give SO3 a 7 or 8. It's decent, but a lot of games have done much, much better. Radiata Stories definitely looks better both from a technical and artistic viewpoint, for example. I do agree that awesome 2D is always desired, and I wish more developers would do it. But it's not like we have blocky messes that are far away from looking remotely realistic.
as much as i love radiata stories(hello being able to recruit lenneth owns your face,plus jack is my favorite male charachter in an rpg since ryudo) in terms of gameplay it's probally tri-ace's worst game yet.though admitedly i havent played star ocean 1,maybee it will show up on virtual console translated? the amount of times i got 1 shooted in the game must be against the law somehwere.
moving on...
some things i hate
rpg's with only 4 characters that you virtually start the game with.
what ever happened to secret characters?
games that force you to lose characters for half the game in the name of story-worst offender ff9.
when you get into a battle then when the battle's over you forgot wich way you were going.
traditional rpg's that dont have some form of limit break,overdrive etc. bore me. lol ffx-2...
companies that make games with the word shining in the title but there no strategy in sight
rpg's that use artificial means of increasing the difficulty such is the case in dragon quest 8 having no revival items,and when you finally get revival spells they have a % chance of working.
why are characters always standing still in battle? the horseback battles in wild arms 3 were freakin sweet!
more rpg's need team up attacks. these first appeared in chrono trigger yet to this day they dont appear much in rpg's.
difficulty levels with perks-valkyrie profile gave you incentive to play on higher difficulties in the form of characters items and an ending. i want to see more of this.