Took me 25 hours to beat this game and sincerely, those were really really long hours.
The story is pretty simple, but fun. All the lore with the Aether vs the Er'ther and the Swordians is pretty cool. But unfortunately, the good story is hard to appreciate when the gameplay is awful... especially when you know that Final Fantasy 7 was released a month before.
The interest of an action RPG is to have full control of your character... but you ALWAYS have to fight against the AI of Stahn and against the IA of your teammates. Also, there's a lot of Sacred Stone spread accross the map... but to get them, you need to farm a lot to gain some level. You almost need to be level 60 to have them all.
Problem is when your AI is broken, farming is just awful and when you finally have the Draconis to move freely on the map... you already have more than 20 hours of gameplay, of broken AI and long useless dialogs. You just want to finish the game and beat the final boss.
Another major problem is the world map. On the PS1 version, you have a world map... but no mini-map. If you want to see it, you need to open the menu, check the valuables and open the map and it is SO SO ZOOMED OUT and on top of that, there's no pinpoint of your position. Good luck not getting lost.
Also, only towns are marked, not the forest, caverns, etc.
If you really want to play this game, play the PS2 version. I never played it, but I wish I had choose this version.
The story is pretty simple, but fun. All the lore with the Aether vs the Er'ther and the Swordians is pretty cool. But unfortunately, the good story is hard to appreciate when the gameplay is awful... especially when you know that Final Fantasy 7 was released a month before.
The interest of an action RPG is to have full control of your character... but you ALWAYS have to fight against the AI of Stahn and against the IA of your teammates. Also, there's a lot of Sacred Stone spread accross the map... but to get them, you need to farm a lot to gain some level. You almost need to be level 60 to have them all.
Problem is when your AI is broken, farming is just awful and when you finally have the Draconis to move freely on the map... you already have more than 20 hours of gameplay, of broken AI and long useless dialogs. You just want to finish the game and beat the final boss.
Another major problem is the world map. On the PS1 version, you have a world map... but no mini-map. If you want to see it, you need to open the menu, check the valuables and open the map and it is SO SO ZOOMED OUT and on top of that, there's no pinpoint of your position. Good luck not getting lost.
Also, only towns are marked, not the forest, caverns, etc.
If you really want to play this game, play the PS2 version. I never played it, but I wish I had choose this version.