I liked Final Fantasy 12 quite a lot early on. The combat and character development systems were just different enough from what I was used to to pique my interest. The story had a fairly strong start, and I liked all of the characters (even Vaan and Penelo). The presentation of Ivalice was excellent, and I actually liked trudging around the deserts.

However, as the game progressed, I found myself losing interest and becoming more frustrated. Once I had decent gambits set up, combat largely became a matter of just letting the game play itself. I don't think this is actually a bad thing in and of itself. Being able to operate at such a strategic level has its charms. Unfortunately, the combat animations were just flat out boring. This was further worsened by the lack of interesting abilities. Technicks just weren't cool or useful, and the magic system was quite standard. The martial classes felt far too similar to one another to feel like there was much more diversity in the party than "casts spells" or "doesn't cast spells".

Unfortunately, my growing dissatisfaction wasn't limited to the combat and character building. The main party interactions felt very limited -- I really wanted to see the characters play off each other more. I may have had this feeling in part due to the extraordinarily large amount of dungeon crawling that separated each tidbit of story. Even on x2 or x4 speed, it ended up feeling like an eternity between story elements. Now, this is partially my fault. I don't think I should have hit as many of the hunts early on as I did. I think the story also hit a pretty hard lull about halfway in, which didn't really resolve itself until the very final portion of the game. On top of that, there were several story elements that just felt like they came out of left field or were cool but didn't end up playing into the storyline nearly enough for my liking.

In the end, I don't think it's a bad game, and I think the people who love it are justified. It just didn't really click with me the way I would have wanted. I lost my motivation to keep slogging through the dungeons in the penultimate dungeon. It was just too damn long for me. I ended up reading a synopsis of that dungeon's story elements and then watching a lets play of the final boss and ending FMV. I have no regrets about making that decision-- I actually ended up enjoying the ending of the game, but don't think I would have if I'd spent another 5 hours slogging through dungeons to get there.

I wanted to like Ni No Kuni more than I did. The art was gorgeous, the music a cut above, and the story oozed charm. I genuinely loved the familiar design, and the puns in the names frequently made me smile. The games environments were consistently gorgeous and interesting.

Unfortunately, most of the gameplay just didn't work for me. It felt like I was fighting the game more than I was fighting the on-screen enemies. The basic combat UI was frustrating -- I don't want to be navigating a clunky ring to select an ability in real time! Allied AI was completely brain dead. It wasn't uncommon to issue an attack order to my currently controlled familiar only for that familiar to walk brainlessly into an ally who happened to walk between him and the enemy.

I found most of the progression systems to be tedious. Catching a new familiar was entirely down to luck and could take upwards of an hour when I was looking for a specific one. Evolving a familiar required resetting to level one, and then waiting for a few hours of gameplay until it caught back up with its previous stats. Loot pinata enemies did some to allay that issue, but it was too late for my enjoyment. The food system for boosting a familiars stats was straight up frustratingly slow to make use of. It was still beneficial to make partial use of and avoid some of the tedium, but left me feeling like I wasn't doing what I could to improve my team.

The take heart and give heart mechanic was overused and struck me as lazy. It felt like the majority of the emotional conflicts in the game were just handled with magic, rather than the characters having to grow. That said, there were a few scenes end game that showed true growth in the characters outside of just using magic to solve problems.

The pacing was absolutely terrible. I almost quit the game multiple times at the start because I just wanted to be let loose. I think it took around 10 hours of play time to finally be able to even capture new familiars. The story failed to really capture my interest until the last couple of acts: almost 30 hours in for my pace. Part of this is probably my own fault: I did the vast majority of side quests as they became available. I usually enjoy playing a game that way, but it only increases frustration with pacing. It didn't help that the sidequests were frequently tedious (collect familiar or kill familiar with certain moves) or just uninspired fetch quests.

I think that wraps up most of my stronger feelings on why the game just didn't quite work for me. In the end, I don't regret playing it. The positives I mentioned at the start certainly carried me through the litany of issues I encountered along the way. That said, I don't plan to replay the game at any point.

Scarlet Grace has the best combat of any JRPG I've ever played. I don't want to write an entire treatise on the mechanics, but with all of the timeline manipulation, counters and interrupts, unite attack mechanic (if defeating an actor brings two actors of the same team adjacent on the timeline, a special attack happens), status effects, damage types, delayed spells, cover mechanic, etc. each turn becomes a puzzle leading to easily the most dynamic decision making I've ever experienced in the genre. The combat can be brutally hard -- there's almost always a risk of death, even in regular battles. That said, it's exceptionally fair -- if you use your toolbox appropriately and come up with the right strategy, you'll make it through. Also the final boss, holy crap. They put phases inside the phases and I kept thinking I was gonna die, but somehow scraped by. Top notch send off.

Outside of the combat, though, the game is very stripped down. You essentially run around a world map to trigger events or combat at nodes. Towns are just a menu and the events are largely limited to simple dialogue with character models making poses to show emotion. As with most SaGa games, the overarching story is a bit vague, but still fairly enjoyable. The side quests have stronger writing, though they can still be rather strange and a bit stilted at times. I'm down for that, but it's definitely not for everyone.

Oh, there's 4 different main characters to chose from at the start, each with a different scenario. I chose Balmaint, the executioner. His story is very on-rails for a SaGa game, but I liked Balmaint, Arthur, and company, so it was all good.

I'm a big fan of Kenji Ito's music, and Scarlet Grace is no exception. Similarly, I absolutely love Tomomi Kobayashi's illustrations, and was very happy to see a couple actually show up in game. The character designs are great, though graphics themselves clearly come from a lower budget Vita game.

Scarlet Grace: Ambitions is easily my favorite SaGa game to this point.