I'm not one for more traditional JRPGs generally, so me giving it a 5/5 should say something.
I loved this game all the way through. The chararacters are entertaining, the combat and job systems are fantastic, the music is excellent and there is a lot of meaty side content to enjoy. It also has some QoL features that I kinda wish all JRPGs had, such as x2 and x4 battle speeds and being able to change the frequency of encounters at any time. It also has some pretty nice social features, allowing players to use their friends' job levels or share useable to in-battle abilities, though I ignored the former because it felt a bit silly and I didn't want stupid Miis on my menu.
I also found the game fairly challenging on Hard, though a couple bosses did have really long fights in the first half. But it was SO satisfying to figure out how to beat bosses with the proper strategy and setup, even more so in the second half where you have more tools and such. Highly recommend not looking up strats online and figuring out your own way to beat the bosses. Though I do feel the endgame was kinda broken, as you have so many potentially broken setup possibilities, but it was a joy figuring those out too and trying to efficiently kill bosses. With the right setup, you can even Auto through some of the harder fights in the game (not counting the Nemesis obtained from the social features, which are a marked step up in difficulty).
The story, while nothing special at first and certainty not without its flaws in writing, was pretty cool, with an amazing finale. People love to complain about the later half, though, but I find the complaints as grossly overblown as Dark Souls' difficulty is. At worst, you can rush though the so called repetitive part really quickly as long as you have good strategy against the bosses. I'd also say this later half is not even a half, and more of a quarter. Unless you go for the side content, that is, but the side content during this part is actually really fucking great, specially in the last two chapters. Though I do feel a couple of the chapters could've been folded into a single one, I feel that they kept it how it is mostly to prevent missable content. And even then, there's still a brand new side quest during those, so whatever. So I can kinda see why people get filtered by it, but at the same I find the reaction extremely overblown.
Story aside, I found the characters extremely entertaining, though they're not particularly depth or anything. But I'm not one to think depth = good and simple = bad. The main players have enough depth for what they are, and they get more development through side content, with some really cool backstories too. I loved the asterisk bearers, all of them being very amusing in their own ways.
Music I touched on but I wanna repeat that this game's soundtrack is excellent. It feels like a bit of a crime that such a good soundtrack is limited by the 3DS, which has both low audio quality and low volume on headphones (at least my 3DSXL does). The one flaw the OST has it that it is very short. It's about 2 hours of music, for a game that I played for nearly 120 hours. I wish there was more to it just to alleviate repetition, but the soundtrack is so good it never tired me.
The voices also sound pretty compressed, probably because the game is nearly fully voiced save for generic NPCs and party chars, in both English and Japanese, while being a long-ass JRPG that has to fit within the limitations of the 3DS. Could've probably been alleviated by making the JP voices free DLC instead of bundling them in, but whatever. The compression kinda has some charm and it's not too bad. Voice acting itself I thought was pretty great (played in English) save for Agnès, but her voice made me laugh often enough that I can't be mad at her.
Gameplay is some of the most fun I've played in a turn-based JRPG. The job system is just fantastic, and the nice twist of the Brave Points elevated it further. You can use up (Brave) or store (Default) Brave Points to get up to 4 turns in a row, being able to go into a turn debt by braving into the negatives or play it safe by saving them up first by defaulting (which works as guarding too). BP are unique per character, also. It's just really fun because you have to think about when to Brave and when to Default, and the system extends to bosses so they play with the same rules as you, more or less. On top of combat itself being great dun thanks to BP, the job system is just highly satisfying as you mix and match the abilities of different jobs to come up with builds and setups. Finding a proper synergy is half the fun! There is also very little grinding, and even if you choose to grind it just goes by incredibly fast with x4 battle speed, auto (which repeats the last set of actions you did) and +100% encounter rates.
So yeah all in all, easily one of my favorite JRPGs. Kinda in shock that anyone involved with the boring slog that was 4HoL managed to make such a good game! Also in shock that people filtered so easily by the later "half" of the game.
I loved this game all the way through. The chararacters are entertaining, the combat and job systems are fantastic, the music is excellent and there is a lot of meaty side content to enjoy. It also has some QoL features that I kinda wish all JRPGs had, such as x2 and x4 battle speeds and being able to change the frequency of encounters at any time. It also has some pretty nice social features, allowing players to use their friends' job levels or share useable to in-battle abilities, though I ignored the former because it felt a bit silly and I didn't want stupid Miis on my menu.
I also found the game fairly challenging on Hard, though a couple bosses did have really long fights in the first half. But it was SO satisfying to figure out how to beat bosses with the proper strategy and setup, even more so in the second half where you have more tools and such. Highly recommend not looking up strats online and figuring out your own way to beat the bosses. Though I do feel the endgame was kinda broken, as you have so many potentially broken setup possibilities, but it was a joy figuring those out too and trying to efficiently kill bosses. With the right setup, you can even Auto through some of the harder fights in the game (not counting the Nemesis obtained from the social features, which are a marked step up in difficulty).
The story, while nothing special at first and certainty not without its flaws in writing, was pretty cool, with an amazing finale. People love to complain about the later half, though, but I find the complaints as grossly overblown as Dark Souls' difficulty is. At worst, you can rush though the so called repetitive part really quickly as long as you have good strategy against the bosses. I'd also say this later half is not even a half, and more of a quarter. Unless you go for the side content, that is, but the side content during this part is actually really fucking great, specially in the last two chapters. Though I do feel a couple of the chapters could've been folded into a single one, I feel that they kept it how it is mostly to prevent missable content. And even then, there's still a brand new side quest during those, so whatever. So I can kinda see why people get filtered by it, but at the same I find the reaction extremely overblown.
Story aside, I found the characters extremely entertaining, though they're not particularly depth or anything. But I'm not one to think depth = good and simple = bad. The main players have enough depth for what they are, and they get more development through side content, with some really cool backstories too. I loved the asterisk bearers, all of them being very amusing in their own ways.
Music I touched on but I wanna repeat that this game's soundtrack is excellent. It feels like a bit of a crime that such a good soundtrack is limited by the 3DS, which has both low audio quality and low volume on headphones (at least my 3DSXL does). The one flaw the OST has it that it is very short. It's about 2 hours of music, for a game that I played for nearly 120 hours. I wish there was more to it just to alleviate repetition, but the soundtrack is so good it never tired me.
The voices also sound pretty compressed, probably because the game is nearly fully voiced save for generic NPCs and party chars, in both English and Japanese, while being a long-ass JRPG that has to fit within the limitations of the 3DS. Could've probably been alleviated by making the JP voices free DLC instead of bundling them in, but whatever. The compression kinda has some charm and it's not too bad. Voice acting itself I thought was pretty great (played in English) save for Agnès, but her voice made me laugh often enough that I can't be mad at her.
Gameplay is some of the most fun I've played in a turn-based JRPG. The job system is just fantastic, and the nice twist of the Brave Points elevated it further. You can use up (Brave) or store (Default) Brave Points to get up to 4 turns in a row, being able to go into a turn debt by braving into the negatives or play it safe by saving them up first by defaulting (which works as guarding too). BP are unique per character, also. It's just really fun because you have to think about when to Brave and when to Default, and the system extends to bosses so they play with the same rules as you, more or less. On top of combat itself being great dun thanks to BP, the job system is just highly satisfying as you mix and match the abilities of different jobs to come up with builds and setups. Finding a proper synergy is half the fun! There is also very little grinding, and even if you choose to grind it just goes by incredibly fast with x4 battle speed, auto (which repeats the last set of actions you did) and +100% encounter rates.
So yeah all in all, easily one of my favorite JRPGs. Kinda in shock that anyone involved with the boring slog that was 4HoL managed to make such a good game! Also in shock that people filtered so easily by the later "half" of the game.