Alright Sega, now this is what we like to see. Cut out the Sonic crap and pick up more like this and Valkyria Chronicles please. Seeing as I picked this up about 3 weeks ago and am currently about 20 hours in I figured I'd try to drum up a bit more interest in this title, as it seems to have been forgotten in the wake of Final Fantasy XIII.
 
I see this as almost the anti-thesis of Final Fantasy XIII, while XIII streamlines, automates and nurses you into it; Resonance of Fate pushes you straight into the deep end, cement shoes first and tells you to swim. Sure, there's a brief [optional] tutorial at the combat arena but beside telling you what you need to accomplish in order to pass the tutorial the game offers next to no advice on it's combat system; and boy, what a combat system. I'm still learning the intricacies 20 hours in, for example I only yesterday realised that: total level =  Σ all weapon levels, I'd been keeping each character exclusively using a single type of weapon trying to min/max their effectiveness with minimum grinding but in the process had been losing out on weight capacity and health. 
 
I won't even attempt to describe the combat system here, as it starts complex and shoots up to obscenely complex about 6 chapters in when the only way to effectively harm enemies requires 10+ bars of charged machine-gun fire. I recommend checking out a couple of gameplay videos to see how it works, though playing it for myself was the only way I really understood what was going on further than "cool gun-kata moves are awesome"; if your curious about a specific element however, feel free to ask away.
 
The only real complaint I have against the game is that the environments can get a little bland. While the dying, steam-punk-esque Victorian tower of Basel is an interesting place and the characters play off each other nicely [Nolan North does an excellent job voicing Vashyron, though that's no surprise for those familiar with the guy] with plenty of seriously funny scenes the battle environments lack visual variety; with the exception of a short icy dungeon in Chapter 6 so far I've seen brown wastelands, black wastelands, brown factories and a 'forest' of brown statues.
 
A word of warning however: this game is hard. Really hard. One misplaced move or one ill timed Hero movement and you'll end up having to restart the battle over. The difficulty doesn't curve so much as plateau, spike and plateau again every few chapters. This gets pretty frustrating, especially considering save points are few and far between meaning hat if you want to rage-quit a boss battle after losing a couple dozen times be prepared to kiss an hour of wasted time goodbye.
 
That said, if your looking for a different kind of RPG and you don't mind spending a few hours learning the combat system you'll find a seriously good RPG here. Send a positive message to Sega and pick this up if your interested; I can see this being difficult to find in a couple years.
 
A couple videos to hopefully wet your appetite, I suppose mild spoilers on the last 3 but nothing crucial to the plot: