Lost Odyssey

I've utterly rejected the JRPG genre for years, dismissing it as a pointless exercise in grind and random battles, so imagine my surprise (if you will) at finding myself rather addicted to one of them. I was given a copy of Lost Odyssey for free from work (one of the advantages of working in the games industry) and put it into my 360 expecting to tinker about with it for half an hour or so and then never play it again.  In actual fact, it's drawn me in and I'm really enjoying it.  A deep plot (which does take a while to get going), some wonderful writing, great production values and even the random battles are fun as there's a lot of depth and strategy to them. I'm pleasantly shocked and intend to play this one to completion. I'm currently somewhere in disc one of four, so I expect it to take a while.  There are a few niggles, as with everything - it's too sentimental in places, too cheesy in others and the long time between save points is evil in its purest form, but I am finding it difficult to put the game down.  I can heartily recommend this as a good intro to the genre.