While there's a lot of side quests to tackle in EXA and thousands of pieces of loot and special metals to collect, the game is very linear in it's approach. Sure you can return to areas where you have already been, but much of the time the plot tends to lead you by the nose down certain paths. Beyond collecting loot, there's a lot of character growth to be taken advantage of. Beyond leveling up your character the traditional way, players can collect mythril that can be used to do everything from powering up your weapons to powering up your character with hundreds of special skills that do everything from giving you a better level of defense to giving you an attack bonus against certain types of creatures. There truly is a lot to be done here, and it allows players to customize each of their characters the way they see fit.

But EXA is not without some issues. One of the biggest problems I have with EXA is that many of the characters feel unbalanced in the early parts of the game, enticing gamers to take the easy way out with Toma and the knight Gadfort. And let's be honest; it's hard to switch to another character once you've invested time and resources into that character's development. Magic users can be effective - especially later in the game - but building them up and keeping them alive can be difficult in the early part of their development. Chances are most players will focus on Toma to get the job done, but that in turn will leave a weaker team to defend the fortress once business picks up. This forces you to really develop everyone on your time - for better or worse.

Graphically EXA could look better than it does, but it's not the worst looking game we've ever seen on the PlayStation 2 either. The world is kind of bland but the characters, effects, monsters, weapons in the game look nice. Another slightly irritating aspect of the game is the way the camera works. The camera is locked into one position, which makes navigating the world a real pain in the ass. For example, sometimes you'll be walking forward and you won't be able to see what is right in front of you or directly behind because the camera is trailing behind your party or just positioned in an inconvenient way.

While I have some qualms about EXA, I do think that it offers a solid role-playing game experience. It's certainly better than Shining Tears, but it is by no means as good as those classic Shining titles. It's all well and good that Sega wants to create real-time entries in this series but fans and it's profit margins would be better served with a return to the series' original trademark gameplay. At the end of the day I feel comfortable recommending EXA to fans of the series all the way back to the heyday of the Sega Genesis , as long as fans keep in mind the few caveats I’ve mentioned above. It is certainly very playable, offers some fun moments and will keep action RPG fans busy for countless hours. For those cautious folk among the masses out there I recommend a rental first.