I totally agree. While JRPGs are good (though I personally don't care for them), there is more...verisimilitude, I guess, in the way WRPGs go about creating the world. Look at fallout 3 and just tell me it doesn't look like that could happen. Or even the elder scrolls series, or KOTOR. Heck, that last one was a Star Wars game, and its got a "realism" to it that makes the worlds come alive.
Lost Odyssey, on the other hand, is nice to look at, but something about it says "this is not real," to me. It just looks dead. Like there isn't anything going on, and that all the encounters you have are set-up. I don't know why, it just does to me.