I can finally throw my hat into the ring. Before getting into this though, a few things first. I do not know Japanese, I know a few phrases and symbols and that's it. That being said, it is totally possible I misunderstood something or flat out missed something obvious that affected my experience as a result. Feel free to point it out in any replies. I beat the game without any outside assistance except for one tip for a certain battle, so I didn't ready any guides, threads, or translation FAQs. All I knew coming in was what I saw in trailers, what I played in the demo and TGS build, and from the various interviews.
The game looks great, and aside from some frame drops during close ups of the characters for cutscenes, it's one of the best looking games I've ever seen. They've really closed the gap between the CG and the rendered cutscene models. I also love the soundtrack, though they went a bit vocal-heavy with the thing.
I absolutely am not a fan of the battle system and I think it is the worst in the series. I caught myself pressing X as characters attacked because that's how much I want a real-time battle system in this series, and after XII, this is a step back. Yes I know the Gambit system let the game play itself, but at least the battle maps were more real-time than XIII's. Here's where not knowing Japanese nor reading any guides may show I didn't know enough about this game. I thought the AI for my party members was atrocious, simply because they wouldn't do the smartest action possible in certain situations. Like HEAL THE PARTY LEADER SINCE IF THEY DIE, IT IS ALL OVER. I can't tell you how many times a healer would ignore my leader and blow the battle. It was shades of Sheva in RE 5...
Not only that, but because I couldn't toggle between characters, I couldn't issue specific commands to them, such as buffing and debuffing during the more difficult battles later in the game. Sure you can have your leader have every role, but then you have to toggle back and forth between them, which makes you a one-man party in essence. It took too long to get what I wanted done, and I felt luck was needed in more than a few spots to get by when bad AI nearly cost me the battle.
This also spills over into the Crystarium system, which I should love because it is close to the Sphere Grid system of Final Fantasy X - my favorite FF. But just like the major flaw of the system in XII, if you focused too much on the wrong area, your life became hell. Trying to get your stats up to where they should be, especially in the latter third of the game, requires you to go back to that mechanic I loved back in the day but absolutely abhor now - grinding. Oh yea, I hate that crap, and just like XII, I had to grind so much near the end because I apparently wasn't far enough in the Crystarium levels to stand up to the battles to come. Nevermind I fought every normal battle along my path and won up to this point, and I also didn't avoid battles unless it was one I knew I couldn't win or was too difficult at the time.
I reached the final boss in 30 hours. I beat the game in 40 hours. Why? 10 HOURS OF GRINDING to get my stats up to something to survive the encounter. Yet somehow, I was able to beat EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE GAME (sans hidden/optional bosses and mobs) within 10 tries at most. It was, until then, all about figuring out the right combination of party makeup and strategy. I loved that part of the game, until the end.
Also, what was with that "death spell" bosses could cast on me if I took too long? I really think I missed something because taking over 30 mins to beat a boss is a staple of jRPGs, and a testament of will power. It seemed like if I wasn't beating the boss the right way, the game didn't want you to win. I'd figure out a strategy that would lead to victory, but because it was taking too long, the game said "sorry, you get to die". Again, this better be something I missed because if not, that's BS.
So yea, battle system and mechanics got on my nerves in the end, and the other low point of the game is the pacing and structure. It's mostly linear, with a small portion that's sort of open world, but it's a single environment about the size of a normal zone in an MMO where you can explore (to an extent) and not be forced to follow a certain path. I've seen people compare this to Final Fantasy X, but at least Spira was interconnected and you could go back and forth across the entire world, sans getting on a boat or Shoopuff to travel across water. You even got an airship BEFORE the end of the game to explore around.
You can finally "backtrack" only at the very end, which is there for people to do the optional missions and bosses, or for people like me who are gonna need to grind to survive that last encounter. XII's world was great. X's world, while more linear, was much better than XIII's. Sure there's a bit of exploration every now and then, but it's mostly a fixed path. I've heard the term "on-rails RPG" from my friends who watched me play a good bit this past week. There wasn't even really an "overworld" per-say, which is what I think was the key ingredient missing.
Despite those issues, I still had a moderate amount of fun and I did feel satisfied when I finished the game. And again, until the latter part of the game, I was enjoying the "figure-out-the-strategy" style of boss encounter. Oh, and thank you very much for letting me start right at a battle (or close to it) when I wiped. Not that there weren't a plethora of save points and you started fresh after each battle, but it just made life easier. I also wasn't too adverse to there being no towns or traditional shops to visit, and being able to do handle purchasing and selling inventory from any save point made things simpler. There were still a few areas with a population to interact with, but some part of me did miss having towns with lively scenes.
I'm kinda dreading having to play this thing all over again in English to fully understand and appreciate the story (and probably some other stuff), but who knows, maybe it will be more pleasant the second time around. And to be fair, these are just fresh impressions right after beating it, so after I've had more time with it and get to play the English version, maybe I'll come around and like it better. So for somebody who played the Japanese version with no understanding of the language, this is what I thought.
I did 50 and that was really really overkill with me having no life for that week outside of XIII!
