Wow.
Polish, personified. What an awesome first hour of gameplay - from a great tutorial (that helped you self-assess what difficulty level to play on) to a dramatic opening sequence that was well written and completely sucked me in.
I can't wait to play some more -- most likely in the new year after I've had a chance to digest more Blue Dragon and Mass Effect. I knew it was going to be good (I loved the previous 3 versions) and I have no reason to doubt it any more.
The tutorial and difficulty setting self-assessment (which reminded me of one of my favorite guilty-pleasure movies, The Final Option) is worth studying and discussing in further detail. I will do this in a future post.