Magus80

I'll be up front here, I generally don't like open-world games as they often rely on repetition and quantity over quality of content so bear this in mind. Didn't find it charming as others claimed. There is an excessive amount of mediocre dialogues to wade **** I found myself skipping the majority of them as they don't offer anything substantial. I didn't like the overall game structure of managing your Lives because you basically had to run and forth back to your guild to switch between your Life. Combat is basic and clunky, controls border on frustration sometimes. I found myself slashing at empty air wasting few seconds when I wanted to harvest or mine or chop a tree which is annoying. The world is beautiful and interesting to explore but it's somewhat ruined by excessive fetch quests asking for mundane things.

Just finished the story, what an fantastic game, was not expecting something of this caliber since FFT. +80 hours of reading epic story / gameplay not including postcontent bonus dungeon which have 50 floors and probably will add another 30-40 hours, excellent value for $40 game. +well-written dialogues along with voice acting +fun battles that keep things varied +likable cast of characters +good details in chibi -graphics may be a turn-off to some if you dislike chibi models but I thought this was really well-done and I normally don't like chibi.

about 5 hours in +fun and challenging boss fights, sadly that's only a plus -terrible story / dialogue -bland graphics and FPS -poor map design -platforming feel clunky -lack of Metroidvania actual exploration

Only 15 hours played so far: +decent story / character development +somewhat fun battle system and random encounters are next to nil -lazy map design, basically only 10 map areas that get reused throughout the game -bland character design / animations -this game is a sequel that was meant for players who have played 1st game which was never localized here so many players will be lost. -excessive amount of mundane dialogues to wade through

+gameplay is fun and polished +plenty of content / collectibles +Nemesis system bring something new and fun +adorable orcs that can be killed in numerous ways -weak story and ending, absence of your favorite LotR monsters -repetitive missions that can get old fairly quickly -substantial content taken out of game for DLCs, wait for the GotY edition, of course -lack of varied environments, it's just mostly forests, some rocks, castles and strongholds

Only played 10 hours so far before I got annoyed and stopped. Good: decent story, dialogue with some humor that feels natural but lacking character development. graphics are nice considering this game was originally from 16 bit system along with enemies looking nice. Equipment / accessories add some decent customization. Bad: bland animations that take forever to play out and there's no options to speed or skip it. Normal random encounters can get very tedious, they usually last about 1-2 minutes. Not much of variety to enemies. Map design is all over the place, often requiring you to consult a guide to navigate. Healing in the field is just as annoying, you're forced to watch 5 seconds of healing effect animation each time that only heal 1/5 of your HP. All of those are very baffling game design choices that the devs went with would not hold up to the modern standard of most present-day JRPGs even including past JRPGs that were well-executed. Despite those glaring flaws in game design, I got a distinct impressions that this game is a labor of love and possibly could be enjoyable if you have a patience and are in a mood for something relaxing.

This could be actually a good game if bit more effort were put into polishing it. It is very much a classic JRPG that tried to emulate Chrono Trigger but fell short. inventory management is a chore. Animations are rather bland, lacking a certain charm and poorly done. it's also plagued by numerous crash bugs but alleviated some by auto-save between areas. Sidequests are even just paste/copy throughout the game and all rewards are literally same. Dialogue is uninteresting at best and felt like it was just put in as a filler instead of actually contributing to the story and character development.

Don't assume from the bad reception and negativity surrounding FFXIII as the series that this game will be bad, just give this a try. This game is actually fun. The story / characters are not its strongest point, however. The gameplay more than make up for it. Time limit is not much of a factor as you would think. You have more than ample time to finish most of content. The battle system is quite excellent and have tremendous variety of customization options.