Just got my grubby mitts on a copy of this game and am a couple of hours in. Style-wise, it’s FF7AC without all the totally ridiculously over-the-top fights, which is a very good thing. Here (at least so far) it’s mainly gun battles, though you do have a melee attack as well. You have three types of guns (a handgun, a machinegun, and a rifle) all with different abilities; there’s also a scope which lets you go into sniper rifle mode, like MGS games, which is neat. You can also use magic by equipping materia on your gun. You have very limited item capacity, so using them judiciously is really important. Speaking of which, items include a “Limit Breaker”, which lets you turn into the Galian Beast and start smashing things. 
This is definitely not an RPG. It’s a third-person shooter that apparently plays like an FPS and has a couple of half-hearted RPG elements thrown in. I was a little overwhelmed at the number of actions that the controls cover, but after the tutorial and a bit of real fighting, I actually got the hang of it. That’s pretty good for someone who hasn’t played an FPS in about eight years. It’s challenging without being too annoying.
I was quite gratified to see that this game implements practically every single recommendation I made in my recent editorial. You can start the game almost instantly after turning on the PS2. You can pause at any time (not sure about FMV sequences though), skip scenes, extensively customize the controls, and (YAY!) there’s a tempsave feature which lets you save whenever you want. What’s more, there’s an autosave which allows you to start at almost any point in the entire game up to where you reached. This is an awesome idea; the downside is that it uses an incredible amount of memory card space (over 600K!).
Graphically it’s really astounding - crisp and detailed, along with FF7AC-caliber movie sequences. It’s a dark and serious game (as might be expected with a main character being a sort of vampire/Frankenstein cross). Music keeps the mood well but isn’t particularly memorable.
The story is also really interesting and a bit reminiscent of FF7AC as well to a certain extent (though with very different players). I’ve already seen re-enactments of a couple of key FF7 scenes in the new graphics, which were awesome. Voice work is superb so far. I’m having a blast. The only downside seems to be that it’s quite a short game, so I hear. I guess I’ll give more info as I go.
I’ve been debating over weither or not to get this game. Thanks to what Cid has reported i’m sold. Thanks Cid. 