This is a followup to my original review, it's mostly just some thoughts and additions now that I've 'beat' the postgame.
1) Visual pollution is a bit of a massive problem. Almost every character has tons of attacks that coat the screen in particles or visual effects, and bosses aren't much better. Sandalphon, in his datamined state, covers half the screen in his wings when he's in powerup form, which will only make this worse. Don't get me started on Lucillius. Also, much like FFXIV (a comparison I made last time) sometimes it is near-impossible to see AoEs under all the effects. Which sucks! Schlatt loops won't kill me directly, but Paradise Lost will.
2) Somehow, in trying to make the game less grindy than its parent game, it actually feels grindier. Lacking the ability to slot a weapon in your grid temporarily until it can be uncapped means you're stuck with just one, and the grind to max it means looooooooooooooooooots of repetitive fighting. Unskippable intro/death cutscenes eat into the time something fierce, meaning "do some fast clears" is about 50x the length of the equivalent activity in GBF Mobile. Japanese players are still around to two-shot things for you though, shoutout to them.
3) They did keep Zero for Lucillius' fight.
4) Sigils are ostensibly meant to replace grids (3x3 weapon slots + one mainhand) from the mobile game but they're subject to RNG in the same ways Monster Hunter's decos/talismans are which is a problem because they're basically essential for gameplay. Most of your survivability and/or damage comes from them. Which leads into...
5) The Damage Cap is a good system for GBF Mobile and its systems, but it's not so great for an Action RPG where there's already a noticeable grind to even get damage. Sticking on some Damage Cap sigils and finding out you've arbitrarily been fucked out of thousands upon thousands of damage kinda sucks for this game? Again, it's fine in the mobile game because of the ways in which damage and damage cap increases are acquired, but not so much here.
The complaints about sigils really manifest here in all the worst ways, because sigil slots are incredibly limited despite how many you appear to have, and this is a game that encourages speedy kills. Which, again, leads into...
6) There is a lot of variety on display with the cast, but this is a pretty significant case of 'all characters are created equally, but some are more equal than others'. Characters like Rackam, Narmaya, Siegfried, Yodarha and Zeta excel while Ferry, Eugen, Cagliostro, Percival and Charlotta don't. You can absolutely clear Lucillius (at the time, the hardest content) with anyone, but there's a significant gap in both effectiveness and also... Fun. God, Percival is so miserable. I hate eternal Schlatt loops.
7) Pyet-A is such a hilarious pick for a penultimate boss. Hey man, you remember that unremarkable event raid from one of the Society side stories in GBF Mobile? Yeah sure let's just make it one of the coolest fights in the game. It'd be like if FFXIV added a new raid boss from FF7 and it was fucking Staniv.
8) I'm actually a bit sad that the Captain is very rigidly a sword/wind unit. In the mobile game they have a lot of classes, can be any element, and use basically any weapon type. Of every playable Gacha MC, they're easily the strongest and most useful. Here they're... They're good, yeah? But boring. Where's my fist moveset, Okubo.
9) I can't believe they're adding Seofon because the Captain's ultimate weapon is the Seven-Star Sword. That's so fucking funny.
10) No male Erune representation sucks. Where's Eustace or Seox?
11) Not to hop on the mobile game comparisons again, but I'm not sure how to feel about Refinium (uncap material) and Fortitude Crystal (level up material). I think the need to grind them out, again, makes the actual grind feel more intense. In GBF Mobile you can just feed a lot of the trash/dupes you get from grinding other stuff into your gear, which doesn't remove the grind but does in fact allow you to ~passively~ grind some things. Refinium and FCs don't.
12) I almost always play JP games dubbed just for the sake of being able to process what's being said better, but I had to play this game subbed. GBF has a lot of utterly legendary performances in it, so hearing how unenthusiastic and joyless the crew are soiled it for me. The VAs for the game-original characters are great, so are most of the optional recruits, but holy shit. Rosetta, baby, they ruined you.
Ultimately it's probably telling that despite all these issues, the rating only went down by 0.5 stars. It helps that they only appear deeper into postgame, and the story + early-mid postgame are fine.
Please add Vira.
1) Visual pollution is a bit of a massive problem. Almost every character has tons of attacks that coat the screen in particles or visual effects, and bosses aren't much better. Sandalphon, in his datamined state, covers half the screen in his wings when he's in powerup form, which will only make this worse. Don't get me started on Lucillius. Also, much like FFXIV (a comparison I made last time) sometimes it is near-impossible to see AoEs under all the effects. Which sucks! Schlatt loops won't kill me directly, but Paradise Lost will.
2) Somehow, in trying to make the game less grindy than its parent game, it actually feels grindier. Lacking the ability to slot a weapon in your grid temporarily until it can be uncapped means you're stuck with just one, and the grind to max it means looooooooooooooooooots of repetitive fighting. Unskippable intro/death cutscenes eat into the time something fierce, meaning "do some fast clears" is about 50x the length of the equivalent activity in GBF Mobile. Japanese players are still around to two-shot things for you though, shoutout to them.
3) They did keep Zero for Lucillius' fight.
4) Sigils are ostensibly meant to replace grids (3x3 weapon slots + one mainhand) from the mobile game but they're subject to RNG in the same ways Monster Hunter's decos/talismans are which is a problem because they're basically essential for gameplay. Most of your survivability and/or damage comes from them. Which leads into...
5) The Damage Cap is a good system for GBF Mobile and its systems, but it's not so great for an Action RPG where there's already a noticeable grind to even get damage. Sticking on some Damage Cap sigils and finding out you've arbitrarily been fucked out of thousands upon thousands of damage kinda sucks for this game? Again, it's fine in the mobile game because of the ways in which damage and damage cap increases are acquired, but not so much here.
The complaints about sigils really manifest here in all the worst ways, because sigil slots are incredibly limited despite how many you appear to have, and this is a game that encourages speedy kills. Which, again, leads into...
6) There is a lot of variety on display with the cast, but this is a pretty significant case of 'all characters are created equally, but some are more equal than others'. Characters like Rackam, Narmaya, Siegfried, Yodarha and Zeta excel while Ferry, Eugen, Cagliostro, Percival and Charlotta don't. You can absolutely clear Lucillius (at the time, the hardest content) with anyone, but there's a significant gap in both effectiveness and also... Fun. God, Percival is so miserable. I hate eternal Schlatt loops.
7) Pyet-A is such a hilarious pick for a penultimate boss. Hey man, you remember that unremarkable event raid from one of the Society side stories in GBF Mobile? Yeah sure let's just make it one of the coolest fights in the game. It'd be like if FFXIV added a new raid boss from FF7 and it was fucking Staniv.
8) I'm actually a bit sad that the Captain is very rigidly a sword/wind unit. In the mobile game they have a lot of classes, can be any element, and use basically any weapon type. Of every playable Gacha MC, they're easily the strongest and most useful. Here they're... They're good, yeah? But boring. Where's my fist moveset, Okubo.
9) I can't believe they're adding Seofon because the Captain's ultimate weapon is the Seven-Star Sword. That's so fucking funny.
10) No male Erune representation sucks. Where's Eustace or Seox?
11) Not to hop on the mobile game comparisons again, but I'm not sure how to feel about Refinium (uncap material) and Fortitude Crystal (level up material). I think the need to grind them out, again, makes the actual grind feel more intense. In GBF Mobile you can just feed a lot of the trash/dupes you get from grinding other stuff into your gear, which doesn't remove the grind but does in fact allow you to ~passively~ grind some things. Refinium and FCs don't.
12) I almost always play JP games dubbed just for the sake of being able to process what's being said better, but I had to play this game subbed. GBF has a lot of utterly legendary performances in it, so hearing how unenthusiastic and joyless the crew are soiled it for me. The VAs for the game-original characters are great, so are most of the optional recruits, but holy shit. Rosetta, baby, they ruined you.
Ultimately it's probably telling that despite all these issues, the rating only went down by 0.5 stars. It helps that they only appear deeper into postgame, and the story + early-mid postgame are fine.
Please add Vira.