currently can't bring myself to finish this. i'm in the home stretch of it, but the combat and systems are so flimsy that i never want to turn it back on.
i can only assume the ATB system is to make combat more dynamic, but it flip-flops between too slow and too fast. problems with this system are evident as early as the first boss fight--i pick an attack and think i have enough time before the snail goes back into its magic-reflecting shell, only for the delay to be too long and my attack gets reflected. (timing your attack as a consideration never comes back, either) i assume the varying delay is in service of a hidden turn order, because otherwise i have no clue why characters will attack right away or take ages to do so.
easy random encounters are even more of a drag since every single thoughtless attack input needs a delay before it happens. hectic boss battles go off the rails when your heal command takes too long to come out, and now the caster dies. or maybe the heal target died, and now the game decided to heal the boss instead. i like the idea of menu-ing becoming a stressful challenge when things get hectic, but spell lists with massive gaps in between options doesn't make it feel fair.
combat loses even more of its steam when espers come into play. now any character can have any spell. their unique attributes are thrown out the window and i just taught every single one of them healing spells and powerful magic attacks. i could now plow through the game by mashing attack and healing when necessary. it's my fault for playing this way, but it's also the job of the game designer to force me to play in an interesting way. characters having major specialties helped push me in that direction.
there's a lot of possible customization here--so much that these critiques might be null and void. the developers have included a large amount of game designerly band-aids so i can tune my own experience. i had all of the ATB settings on the fastest options, and enemies would still attack in menus. i could always slow things down, turn that off, refuse to use espers and grind instead, or dedicate a lot of time to learning how to use Gau and more. these don't really do it for me. everything else in the game is alright. the story is simple but well-paced, the music is memorable, and so is the art. it's a fine game across the board, but it suffers in the meat of the experience, which is the part you play.
i can only assume the ATB system is to make combat more dynamic, but it flip-flops between too slow and too fast. problems with this system are evident as early as the first boss fight--i pick an attack and think i have enough time before the snail goes back into its magic-reflecting shell, only for the delay to be too long and my attack gets reflected. (timing your attack as a consideration never comes back, either) i assume the varying delay is in service of a hidden turn order, because otherwise i have no clue why characters will attack right away or take ages to do so.
easy random encounters are even more of a drag since every single thoughtless attack input needs a delay before it happens. hectic boss battles go off the rails when your heal command takes too long to come out, and now the caster dies. or maybe the heal target died, and now the game decided to heal the boss instead. i like the idea of menu-ing becoming a stressful challenge when things get hectic, but spell lists with massive gaps in between options doesn't make it feel fair.
combat loses even more of its steam when espers come into play. now any character can have any spell. their unique attributes are thrown out the window and i just taught every single one of them healing spells and powerful magic attacks. i could now plow through the game by mashing attack and healing when necessary. it's my fault for playing this way, but it's also the job of the game designer to force me to play in an interesting way. characters having major specialties helped push me in that direction.
there's a lot of possible customization here--so much that these critiques might be null and void. the developers have included a large amount of game designerly band-aids so i can tune my own experience. i had all of the ATB settings on the fastest options, and enemies would still attack in menus. i could always slow things down, turn that off, refuse to use espers and grind instead, or dedicate a lot of time to learning how to use Gau and more. these don't really do it for me. everything else in the game is alright. the story is simple but well-paced, the music is memorable, and so is the art. it's a fine game across the board, but it suffers in the meat of the experience, which is the part you play.