After a couple of hours playing Beyond the Beyond, some initial
impressions...

I can heartily reccomend BTB if you enjoyed Lunar or similar RPG's.  It's
exactly the same.  I mean it.  Except for a few tweaks here and there
gameplay-wise, and a couple of graphical enhancements, it's just like a 16
bit RPG.  Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, because any RPG for
the Playstation would be welcome, but I wish that it had done more than it
did.

Only being two hours into it, (I'm trying to shake a cold) I can't really
comment too much on the story.  At this point, I'm underway, but with no
real way of telling how far I have left to go.  If they claim 40+ hours of
gameplay, they'd better deliver, because your saved game info tells you
how long you've been playing, so when you finish, you'll know exactly how
long it took you.  Basically, the story is the same as just about every
other RPG.  You are a young boy, you have a dragon for a pet, and you set
off with a friend to help find out what's happening to the kingdom as it
is being overrun by an evil empire.  You pick up friends who help you
along the way, and you travel from village to village, castle to castle,
fighting monsters at every turn, resting at inns, and saving at churches. 
Nothing new here.  (Granted, at the end, it could get really interesting,
but I'm not holding out much hope.)

The graphics are pretty much 16 bit quality.  On the exterior map, as you
travel the countryside, it's actually a pretty impressive polygonal
landscape, and the mountain ranges shift as you walk along.  It's hard to
describe, but it looks great as you play.  But once you're inside a
village, castle, or cave, it looks just like every 16 bit RPG you've ever
played.  I was hoping since this is supposed to be 32 bit, they'd at least
have larger sprites for the characters (these are so small, when one
character was lying on the ground unconsious, I couldn't tell which was
their head and which was their feet.) or maybe have CGI rendered character
sprites.  I would also have hoped that the caves/castles/villages would
have been polygons like the outside.  No such luck.  Maybe for the sequel.
 The battle screens are kind of impressive, but kind of a letdown at the
same time.  The background is polygonal, and spins into view as your
characters leap down dramatically from the sky.  The view changes during
battle, as you or the monsters attack, but since the characters are all 2D
sprites, it looks a little weak.  The characters only have 4 views (front,
back, and left & right sides) so as the scene rotates, the characters
suddenly shift to the next view.  The spell effects are good, although
I've only seen a couple so far (the heal looks the neatest so far). They
are pretty well animated, and overall, they work very well, but again,
since it's supposed to be the next generation, I was hoping for more.

The gameplay is very much like every other RPG.  You wander around the
countryside, and suddenly the screen scales in and you fight a battle
against some random monsters.  Then you visit wherever you're supposed to
visit, and talk to people, and then you find out what you're supposed to
do next, and then you go and do it.  That's it.  There are puzzle elements
involved, and I've already run across one of those.  I've read that they
get more complicated, and that's a good thing, becuase the first one was
easy to figure out, but more difficult to execute.  I know people will
think I'm crazy, but I kind of enjoy having the other people in your party
fight for themselves.  There are options to change your tatctics,
including choosing to control each character separately, but in the
beginning, when all you fight are bats and slime, I like being lazy and
just letting them go about their business.  So far, they've made pretty
good choices.  I did have to tell them to stop wasting powerful fire
magics on lame monsters, at one point.  When the battle is really
important, I'll probably take over then.  There's some wierd battle system
that tells you to press buttons in rapid succession to change the power of
your blows, but they don't tell you what to push, so during a battle, I
end up just mashing buttons, and seeing what happens.  So far I've been
able to attack twice, and do a dual attack with the dragon that does more
damage.  Also, if you hit the button at the right moment, you can guard
when the monster attacks you, so he does no damage.  The timing has to be
just right, and it doesn't always work, but it's kind of fun not being
able to sleepwalk through the fights.  You do actually have to pay
attention, because you can always try to guard yourself if they choose to
attack you.

Okay, that's story, graphics, gameplay... what's missing?  Oh
yeah...music.  I won't even get into it.  It's pretty weak.  Not so awful
that you wince, but nothing that you'll enjoy hanging around a dungeon
just to hear more of.

**** (out of 5) - I feel a little generous, giving it 4 stars, but there's
nothing really wrong with it.  I just wish it was more "next
generation-ish."  I don't know why I'm bothering to review this anyway. 
If you like RPG's, you're so starved that you've probably already bought
this, and if you don't like them, then you wouldn't buy this anyway.  But
just in case you were on the fence, I recomend it. (but I'm biased - RPG's
are my favorite.)  Play it now, because once FFVII comes out, everything
else will look like 8 bit...