I'm not to worried about the game not being released in Europe - I can get it on import, and my PS2's chipped, so it's all good - it just grates sometimes. The next SMT game will undoubtedly be released on PAL (Lu's Call and DDS1 are doing quite well, I hear) so I'll wait for that. In Square's absense with the Final Fantasy series, loads of other underground RPGs - Shadow Hearts, Suikoden, MegaTen - have almost taken over. FF12 is going to have to be pretty damn spectacular if Square want to keep their RPG crown.
If it's the shop responsible for the re-print, I guess I can't be mad at Atlus for that.