Happy Boxing Day, everyone.
I started playing this a couple of days ago. I've seen it held in high regard around here.
It's an interesting game. I am having fun playing it and seeing how all the different things I do affect the map, sometimes in pretty big ways. The battle system takes a while to get a handle on, but I can clear most "Hard" battles after a try or two at this point. It feels a bit grindy though, especially if you want to get new characters up to speed (and I've picked up so many!)
My protagonist is Leo and his 90% ridiculous motivation. I think I might be nearing the end of his story? I have most of the Scarlet Shards at this point and I've had one superboss encounter pop up on the map (which I did not even try to challenge). I am currently supposed to go to Azhuacan, after reaching the Northeast Boundary, being told that Ei-Hanum is "at the centre of the world," and assuming that means it's below Azhuacan. But at the moment I am exploring other places instead, and especially trying to get some of this specialty product development going... of which there is so much that it's just feeding my suspicion about the game length.
I was hesitant on this game due to the artwork, and honestly? I'm enjoying it a lot, but the game's presentation hurts it so much. The art direction is pretty mediocre all around. Like after starting the game up and playing for a bit I was kind of baffled that this is the game I've seen so much praise for around here and I considered quitting. The character and enemy art is mediocre at best (and it does that stupid shit where it makes the female characters thin in a way that is distracting as all hell because it just means that they have no ribcages), the music is generic, the voice work is meh (particularly some of the battle dialog is gratingly poor whether in voice work or actual writing or both), the UI is shockingly noisy, unattractive, and poor at effectively communicating the most important information, and some of the text is bafflingly small even in Classic mode, which is supposed to be designed for smaller screens? I'm playing on a TV and I have the UI set to Classic because I tried Modern and holy god the font is like pt 4. At least on Classic it's mostly not incredibly tiny.
Like I'm enjoying it now and I intend to see it through to the end but the art direction in all respects is just a huge turn off at first.
But I am enjoying it now and so I am curious about a few things:
I started playing this a couple of days ago. I've seen it held in high regard around here.
It's an interesting game. I am having fun playing it and seeing how all the different things I do affect the map, sometimes in pretty big ways. The battle system takes a while to get a handle on, but I can clear most "Hard" battles after a try or two at this point. It feels a bit grindy though, especially if you want to get new characters up to speed (and I've picked up so many!)
My protagonist is Leo and his 90% ridiculous motivation. I think I might be nearing the end of his story? I have most of the Scarlet Shards at this point and I've had one superboss encounter pop up on the map (which I did not even try to challenge). I am currently supposed to go to Azhuacan, after reaching the Northeast Boundary, being told that Ei-Hanum is "at the centre of the world," and assuming that means it's below Azhuacan. But at the moment I am exploring other places instead, and especially trying to get some of this specialty product development going... of which there is so much that it's just feeding my suspicion about the game length.
I was hesitant on this game due to the artwork, and honestly? I'm enjoying it a lot, but the game's presentation hurts it so much. The art direction is pretty mediocre all around. Like after starting the game up and playing for a bit I was kind of baffled that this is the game I've seen so much praise for around here and I considered quitting. The character and enemy art is mediocre at best (and it does that stupid shit where it makes the female characters thin in a way that is distracting as all hell because it just means that they have no ribcages), the music is generic, the voice work is meh (particularly some of the battle dialog is gratingly poor whether in voice work or actual writing or both), the UI is shockingly noisy, unattractive, and poor at effectively communicating the most important information, and some of the text is bafflingly small even in Classic mode, which is supposed to be designed for smaller screens? I'm playing on a TV and I have the UI set to Classic because I tried Modern and holy god the font is like pt 4. At least on Classic it's mostly not incredibly tiny.
Like I'm enjoying it now and I intend to see it through to the end but the art direction in all respects is just a huge turn off at first.
But I am enjoying it now and so I am curious about a few things:
- Are the other protagonists like a NG+ thing or is this one of those games where multiple playthoughs is part of the actual narrative in some way? My protagonist is Leo but I can see Balmaint is another protagonist via the title screen and he's actually in my party already.
- Regardless of which is the answer to the previous question, I hope that there's like NG+ benefits or something to speed up later parts because it does feel a bit grindy at times.
- There are so many playable characters. Should I be focusing on anyone specific? Because I've been grabbing anyone I can and alternating doing weak encounters with the newcomers and sending them on missions.
- I've been keeping everyone to just mastering one weapon really well. My highest weapon level masteries are around level 25 at the moment. Should I be making people dual class? What's the maximum weapon rank?
- There is so much product development. I can't believe how long that list is vs how long it took me to unlock access to it. How important is this? I kind of want to run around doing all of it but I haven't seen enough of it to know if it really matters. All I've done so far is turn some straw into nets or compost. And I can't seem to find where either goes from there.