First disc ended at 12:49. That was with reading all the novel extracts I found, talking to most of the towns people and searching every area for items ect (I want the All Chests achievement).
However bosses killing me (happens a lot) and reloaded rather than continuing would have boosted the actual play time a little more than this.
My Xbox is two + years old and takes a real beating, especially in light of the recent slew of games, and so recently I've noticed the drive is taking slightly longer to load things than it did before. Still,
the load times here are long - when a battle starts you are treated to magical cogs revolving, then the scenery you are going to be fighting in, then one of your characters saying something, then a full shot of your party getting ready to fight and then the camera spins to show your enemies and combat begins. It hasn't really started to annoy me yet though
What is annoying is when a boss kills you and you have to sit through mulitple "load-and-multi-part-skip" cutscenes to get back there. Anyone who failed the first shooting section in BD will know what I mean by this.
The split in the character types is really fantastic. The human characters are much weaker than the Immortals, and obviously run a fixed path. At some points they feel like nothing more than cattle for the Immortals to rob skills from

Not that they aren't useful in battle, but when one of them learns a new skill or you find a new accessory you have four characters (I have three of them now) who can then take that skill and mix it with every other skill there is.
So you bascially get old school and totally customizable characters together.
The level cap system also means no one character can walk over every enemy that shows up. You know how after a while your Melee characters start to kill everything in one hit? (I'm looking at you Shu) Not happening here. Everyone is useful and the dyanmic with five characters in combat is just fanastic. Once I have all four Immortals I think my head might explode.
There is no limit on the number of skills a character can learn, but there are limits on how many they can have equipped. You need slots to equip them, and items called "Slot Nut" increase the number of slots. You can choose who to give these too and just find them in chests etc. so not sure if there is a maximum number of slots yet. Maybe but it looks high (I have 7 slots each for Kaim and Seth already.)
The overall concept of having to raise the human characters to make your Immortals better is fantastic, too - when they learn a new skill it isn't just great for them, it opens up a whole new load of possibilities.
Anyway, I'm off to get back to it!