I felt more like this than NWN2 this weekend, so I popped it in and played a few hours. Bearing in mind that I've only just gotten off Tattooi... er, the first planet, here are my impressions:
1) Cutscenes. Man, there are a lot of cutscenes. Some of 'em are good, some of 'em are bad, but they're all over the place. I know it's a JRPG staple, but I don't play a ton of JRPGs, so this was newish for me.
2) The writing isn't great, but it's about on-par with what I've seen in a lot of JRPGs. The guy who voices the hero (who apparently did the VO for the young Batman in Batman Beyond) does, I think, a good job with really weak material, so at least he's, you know, emoting and stuff.
3) The combat is about on par with Jade Empire -- if you thought it was pretty easy, this won't be that much tougher. There are a few monsters that require special tactics, and one nice boss fight (with three cutscenes interrupting it to explain to me what was going on) that required me to use special tactics. I think it's ahead of where Jade was in terms of special stuff, because there are more special abilities and items and such, but in terms of overall difficulty, I don't think it's a huge challenge (although it might get more difficult later).
4) I am surprised by how much I like the talent-progression tree. There's no explanation for why plugging a given item into a flowchart causes me to learn a new talent, but it does, and it makes me feel a little cooler than I feel just plunking points into "Ability to Throw Fireballs" in simpler point-buy games.
So essentially, play it for the gameplay, nod politely during the story, and enjoy. It's a game that I'd honestly rather play in Japanese with English subtitles, but then, that's the way I watch my anime, and this is most definitely anime. (I don't know if anyone here will get this, but in the cutscene that introduced the first city, I chirped out, "Last-ah Exile!" in the voice of the woman who does the commercial lead-ins for the "Last Exile" anime, and my wife laughed until she fell off the couch.)