Ill finish my review for this later but you know. This game could have been a lot tighter narrative and character wise, and you can kind of tell he worked on this for 8 years cause its just got the pacing of someone who has been writing something for so long they cant really tell about the pacing anymore. I remember thinking to myself "man I wonder if he thinks hes already told us this characters back story and motivations because those aspects have already been in his head for so long he forgot to implement them in the game". Theres 12 characters including the side characters, and their importance varies but honestly its like every ones motivations and narrative importance becomes kind of vague at a certain point, and besides the main 8 the other characters feel like you know chrono cross characters you can add to your party that like dont have much to them, or maybe suikoden characters is a better example. This game is a smorgisboard of aspects from other snes/ps1 jrpgs, a lot of shit borrowed from xenogears WHICH ISNT A BAD THING I ACTUALLY LIKE THAT, but you know I think ones mileage may vary if they dont. While i dont think you can excuse a games problems purely on the basis of it being the 8 year long passion project of one guy, i found myself being forgiving because of that reason and also found myself being more impressed of stuff because of that fact. I really enjoyed this game and its journey and its exploration and its characters especially sienna and robb, but its story is trying to be really big to encompass this big world hes created (of which this game only takes place in a small part of it). I thought the composer did a pretty good job all things considered I was afraid the soundtrack was going to be very stale and serviceable but it actually ended up being very memorable and in my opinion one of the things I like best about this game. I enjoyed this game a lot and I think its worth giving a shot and playing but your mileage may vary depending on the type of person you are.