Better than Mass Effect, and one of the best space RPGs of the entire last gen.
Literally just picked it up on a whim while out picking up a different game. Didn't know anything about it other than "Sega" and "Platinum", but as it turns out, Platinum really didn't have much to do with it (it's a NudeMaker game), and Sega basically killed it by not advertising it and not printing nearly enough cartridges to cover demand. If I hadn't taken the gamble, I'd probably never have gotten a chance to play it outside of emulation.
The game has it's problems, such as no questlog and not enough really differentiating the different planets you visit - but what it does that I like, I really loved. The tetris-like ship customization, the crew assignments, the old-school dungeon-crawl sections, etc. Ship to ship combat isn't bad, though is unfortunately broken as fuck the moment you start getting launchers. Then it just becomes a matter of loading your fleet up with accurate and punishing long-distance weapons. Rush in and pin the enemy in place with your launchers, back up out of their weapons range, and then rape them with barrages. It's biggest black-eye is probably ship-to-ship boarding which is just bare bones rock-paper-scissors.
The music, art, and story all hit the right chords with me. I especially like how the game builds up the entire first half as a typical coming of age anime bullshit, with the young protagonist following his dreams and meeting good friends while getting into adventures and basically never having a real challenge because he's so talented and smart. Then the evil empire shows up and he tries to save the day with the power of friendship overcoming the impossible to make miracles happen, and gets completely fucking wrecked to the point his fleet is shattered, his crew dispersed across two galaxies - the remainder of his crew in prison and his mentor dead after kicking his ass into an escape pod and forcing him to flee. When the game picks up, he's an adult beating the shit out of niggers in prison cage fights who is much more cautious, capable, and even tempered. There was a lot of good build-up around the final antagonists, and it's a relief that after all you learn about them being outside and beyond your ability to fight - you don't actually fight them like a lot of games try to make you do (Star Ocean 3). Instead, you just have to sever their link to our universe. That's the win state. Unfortunately, the entire ending scenario of the game is really rushed and it just feels like you're running from the Langoliers for a few battles before the ending credits. They could have done a lot to make it feel more satisfying.
Otherwise, I really like how the game isn't afraid to get downright brutal at times, and several characters end up dying senseless deaths - like poor Franny. She wasn't a great character, but she wanted to suck on the captain's dick a bit. She didn't deserve to get smeared across the hull by a scrap of errant space debris. She didn't even get a dramatic death scene. Nobody even knew she died until they'd already warped out and discovered that she never came back from her EVA. They just found a tiny red smudge on the bulkhead.
All in all, one of my favorite games on the DS, and one of my favorite RPGs in general.