Being sick does have it's advantages and one of those is I can still play games.  Just need to sanitize the controllers afterwards.  So after playing this game I've gotten to a point where I'm a bit burned out on this game but would like to get as far as I can in the game.  I think I'm somewhere around 33 hours into the game so that means I've spent about 11 hours per disk.  Since I'm on the last disk I hope that means all I have left is 11 hours.  If I only played this game that means I could probably finish the game by next weekend.

One thing I do like about Lost Odyssey is they try to change up the combat in the random battles and boss battles.  You can't be too dependent on one fighting style or you'll get into a situation where you can't perform magic or physical attacks are always countered.  On occasion I'll walk into a random battle and be taken down a notch by the AI.  Each member of your party has their specialty so it's best to decide how they should be used early on.  I was ignoring some members as well and this will come back to get you as in the later parts of the 3rd disk your party is split up so will have to use every member.

So far this game has changed my opinions of JRPGs and turn based combat in that I would not avoid them at all cost but I'd make sure I had plenty of time to play them and had nothing else I wanted to play for at least a month.  I have found the turn bases combat challenging and rewarding as you learn how to use each member of the party.  I can't recommend this game to a casual game player because of the time investment these kind of games require.  This game is a saga that gets a little repetitive with all the random battles that pop up.  There are few puzzles or other game play elements to keep things fresh.  Good thing the music in the game is good or else you'd fall asleep playing this game.