Anyone else playing this game? I just started playing it, I can understand the story so far with my limited Japanese, but I really need a walkthrough for how to upgrade weapons and abilities ("arts" as they call it). So far the game is pretty fun, I wish the combat system was more active though. It's basically you select an attack then your character will do that attack at predetermined intervals until you select a different attack. You can give some general commands to your party member, but you can't switch control of the character in battle.
Just beat the ch.2 boss. I hope there's more to the battle system than this, as of right now I have three characters in my party, basically a rouge, tank and healer. But not being able to switch to control them on the fly is a bigger problem that I thought. I needed heals a few times, but the AI controlled healer doesn't heal me, so I used my "light heal", but right after that she heals me, even though my hp is more than half.
I'm 53+ hrs into the game, I'm in ch.8 according to a Chinese guide that I'm using. I grinded a little bit at the beginning of ch.8, but that's about it. The grinding is not as much for level for the drops. Fighting the Fortess Unit yielded some great unique armors (with level 4 gems pre-socketed).
I'm playing the game at 1440x900 4xAA 16xAF, but I can't record at full resolution without the game slowing down too much. This is recorded with Fraps at half resolution.
Slight rant about the end game. I don't know why the creators feel the need to artificoally lengthen the game now. I'm at the final boss's dungeon
Bionis Interior
, but the enemies have so much fucking hp, I can kill them, but it's just takes a while to kill each one. What's worse is I've been playing for 4hrs after what I thought was the final battle. I just don't get it, why?! Why do they feel the need to do this now, this game was pretty evenly paced up until now. This dungeon should've been deleted and let the player directly fight the boss. This is the first issue that really annoyed me about this game. I will still finish it, but probably next weekend. I'm so burnt out right now.
Just beat the game, took me 88 hours, I have done maybe 50-60% of the sidequests, this is a long game. Overall, I really liked it. There were some issues, but for the most part this is a great game. The story is truly epic, there's some great twists, the worlds are expansive and impressive for a Wii game. The game feels even more open than FF13. Actually, this game is more FF than FF13. lol. It's about a blond guy wielding a big sword trying to save the world. If only SquareEnix would've bought Monolith instead of Nintendo, this would've been the FF13 that gamers wanted. I was playing the Japanese version but later switched to the EU version, but I used Japanese audio, the voice acting is excellent, Shulk's voice is a lot better than Tidus (in FFX), and better than the English Snow (FF13). Fiorung's (or Fiora in the EU ver) voice actress is great too. I seem to recognize her from some anime. The music is excellent too, since each locale you go to is drastically different, the music really reflects that. Another thing that's quite impressive is the armor and weapons you equip are shown in the cutscenes. Except for the opening cutscene, all cutscenes are rendered using the in-game engine. While that made it look worse that pre-rendered could've done, I really loved to see my characters' equips shows up in the cutscenes.
Three main issue I have with this game, the character models looks kinda bad, I'm running this on Dolphin emulator, compared to FFX's character model on PCSX2, I actually thought FFX looked slightly better. The second problem is with the controls, you can't switch character controls in mid battle, and there's no gambits to let the player program their response in specific situations. There are only 3 general commands, focus attack on the targeted enemy, attack which every enemy the AI sees fit, and come to me. That's it. In one particular battle where the battle arena was surrounded by ether, the AI keeps going into it thus taking damage. That made the battle very hard. The third problem is the pacing, the game has great pacing throughout, until you reached near then end
after you fought Egil, they should've take you directly to Lorithia already
they added a dungeon to lengthen the game, that dungeon's enemies have a shit load of hp, making it tedious.
If this game was on the PS3 or 360, and if they would've removed that last dungeon, this game is a solid 9.5. But I still loved it, so I would give it a 8.5. Definitely one of the top JRPG ever made.
Massive Ending Spoiler
JRPGs really like to kill god it seems. When I first start playing it I knew Shulk would end up killing god, but this game has a somewhat unique take on "god". Turns out Zanza (or Claus) was just a scientist that happened to recreated the big bang. While Meyneth wanted to live among the people, he wanted to be worshiped. I think in the end Alvis is the true god, he's a neutral entity that holds more power that Zanza or even Shulk. He held the two Monada and basically told Shulk how to create his own Monado.
