kjtten

A solid, but mediocre JRPG without any exceptional highlights, but quite a few shortcomings. On the plus side, there's a lovable cast and a quite engaging story with some (sadly sometimes foreseeable) twists. Visuals are technically solid and the style fits well, the music however is on the lower end and often feels quite off. The gameplay systems work okay for the most part. but promise a large amount of tactical depth which they simply can't deliver. Apart from a handful of story-forced situations, there's no incentive to switch between the members of the fairly large cast, exploration is seldom rewarded, equipment upgrades feel lackluster, the talent and ability systems are imbalanced and grindy, formations are fun, but you're actually punished for experimenting with them, as your character's abilities level up separately for each of the 3 positions. Combat is okay-ish, with speed-up and auto-battle (which btw has glaring oversights that make it near unusable in non-trivial situations - healing spells don't remember on whom they were cast and are instead always cast on the caster themselves - and not being able to see your party's status while auto-batlle is active doesn't help either), but often feels meaningless from a challenge standpoint, as you're auto-healed after each battle (apart from some special situations). Overall the difficulty is rather low, apart from a few situations where it suddenly spikes into nearly one-shotting your party. I already mentioned balancing problems, did I? All in all, I don't regret playing it, but I definitely won't bother with any of the new game + modes. If you really like JRPGs and don't mind the balancing issues give it a try when it's on sale, otherwise, don't bother.