It looks like Borderlands is only for PS3. Maybe I'm wrong though. I looked around and Lost Odyssey looks pretty good. It's between that and Mass Effect if I want one now. I've never played any of the Final Fantasy games (except the first one). Do I need to know the story, or is each game pretty much self-standing? Looks like Star Ocean is for the PS2, but again, I may be mistaken. Tales of Vesperia looks interesting, but I'll wait until more info comes out. But I think they said there is a demo on XBL Marketplace, so maybe I'll go download that. And has anyone here played Eternal Sonata? I played that demo a while back (right before Halo 3 came out) and I liked it. It was a little "kiddy" for me, but it still seemed really fun. I think I did the demo like 3-4 times.
I would definitely go with either Mass Effect or Lost Odyssey. I own them both and I assure you they are both excellent RPGs. Each offers a different style of play though, so it would be best to check them out first and see which is more to your liking.
I've never played Mass Effect, but my friend played it through and what I saw looks really fun, although the ability to actually fly your ship around would have been nice. I know Lost Odyssey pretty well, and its a really Japanese style RPG. Its not one of those games where you make your own story, its much more like those interactive story kind of games, final fantasy being the obvious example. I used to really like the final fantasy series, but after 9 I kinda lost interest, they didn't bring in any new aspects that I'd liked or seen in great western RPGs, and they got rid of the things that made it classic. Lost odyssey has a really nice battle system, but it doesn't have that charm that older FF games had for me. And if you liked the free play style of Oblivion, you may find the very structured nature of the game kind of restricting. But my vote would definitely go to Fable 2. Fable 1 kinda disappointed me in many ways, they left out features that sounded cool in order to rush it to release date, and the resulting tiny world was a big let down. But the game was just so much fun, and it looked so good, that its still one of my favourite original xbox games. Fable 2 looks to be everything 1 should have been and more. And your problems with repetitive gameplay near the end are justified, but shouldn't be a problem in 2 since the fighting system looks to be a lot more complex and balanced (I personally used to hate the targeting system on the original), and the character development for fighting aspect looks really good. It will be worth the wait.
Hm, thanks for reading the original post. I already said that I played that. But thanks for your "vote"... I guess. I did like the system in Oblivion, but I also like the turn-based RPGs of the past. I like planning out my moves and then watching the action take place. There are times when they party is near dead, and you just barely finish a fight alive. Those times, the turn-based games can be just as intense as the real-time action ones. I loved the battle system of KOTOR, although not everyone did. It was a nice mix between real-time and turn-based. Yeah, I am excited to check it out too. I guess I'm going to look into buying a used copy of Lost Odyssey. I'm not looking for another free-form "sandbox" RPG, because I simply don't have the time to get lost in another one of those. But it sure is fun when you do. It seems like Lost Odyssey is a pretty linear, story-driven, turn-based RPG. And I think that's what I'm looking for right now. Eternal Sonata is kind of the same, but perhaps a little more "kiddy". Maybe I'll look into that one as well, and get whichever one catches my eye at the store. Anyway, thanks for the help everyone.