I just started playing SoTC this weekend, a friend of mine randomly dumped it in my lap last friday, telling me to play it. And well, I've really had to put a restriction on myself when it comes to playing it, since I have so much unfinished art and school work to finish, haha. Marvelous game, and I liked ICO too, even if I just played it some on a friend's page ages ago. The upcoming one? Would that be The Last Guardian or something along those lines? It really resembles the style of Team ICO, but I haven't actually thought about it until I started playing Shadow now too. I'll have to check that out.

Obtaining Zalera is extemly fun! But then again I found all esper hunts interesting for some reason, even though they're really just traveling through areas like any others.
Yeah it's a really visually appealing world, though I do however, somewhat agree with you about the dungeons. But not so much because I didn't enjoy them that much, more because of the NUMBER of them. It really surprised me how many they were, considering it being a game that at least was said to be about sky pirates and the like in trailers etc. "Pirates without a sky..." At least Balthier was being honest.