I'm about 9 hours down the road - yes, it all I have done today - and am enjoying it. Did it shatter the very earth upon which I stand? Not at all, but such a highly polished experience with obviously massive production values doesn't come along every day, and that's something to remember.
So, the bare bones. The lip sync issue sucks, the cutscenes look odd in Japanese but I tried the English voices briefly and then quickly switched back. If I go through again (fingers crossed for a New Game + that doesn't have to be downloaded) then I'll play with English voices second time. This isn't a concern for those of you who only want to play the game in English, anyway, and it will be nice for you guys to have it lip synced properly.
Super story heavy, too. You start the game at level 10, and after all day played I am now only level 18 (although more on that below). Often you simply move across a room or enter a new location and another cutscene starts. It took three hours before I even really got to see the battle system properly, and it is only really now that I'm starting to the potential in it. I've still only got three characters. Story and Japanese script and voice acting are top notch, however, (and whatever you think of the story of BD, the second two of these were fantastic in BD, so here's hoping you get a decent translation of them).
The short stories scattered throughout are simply put, amazing. Really, really nicely written. No exposition, no events that we will come back to later, just a total of 30 (I've seen about 8 so far) incidents in the life of a man who has lived for 1000 years. It feels kind of cheap creating such a rich character in Kaim through these (his in-game persona is little more than cool, quiet, moody ROG stereotype A) but the stories are beautifully done. The text appears in interesting ways, floating onto the screen, with key words appearing and key phrases remaining after the other text fades, and they have music and backgrounds that change according to what is happening. I wasn't sure if I would enjoy these (and each is quite long) but they are wonderful. My wife asks to be called into the room when I reach a new one
Combat appears super-by-the-book to start with, but there are some nice twists. The circle which appears on the screen is all about performing special attacks. First you need to find items (generally either picked up or got from monsters in battle) to make "Rings" which can then be equipped in addition to your weapon. These Rings give your attacks abilities like "Poision" etc. When your character attacks you hold down the right trigger and the second larger ring starts to shrink in around the smaller one. Let go of the trigger when the two rings meet and the effect of whatever Ring you have equipped is triggered.
Seeing as you are free to change your Rings when your turn comes around, you essentially have a stock of special attacks that you can pick and choose from depending on the next enemy you want to attack.
The wall system seems nice too - characters in the back are basically dead if attacked once the wall is gone - and the Skill Linking system (rather than getting skills from leveling up, Immortal characters have to link with a non-immortal to learn their skills) is nice too, although right now the points required to learn each skill are so low it is easy to just have them all.
Fixed skills for the human characters and severe variance in player stats also mean something lacking in most recent RPGS - truely unique characters. Rather than the "jack of trades" bunch games like BD and more recent FF games have seen, in which toward the end of the game everyone can do everything and all be exactly the same if you like, here (non-Immortal, at least) is walking a set path, and from their fixed pool of skills you then pick and choose which to give to your Immortals. I'm looking forward to this system flowering once I get more characters.
Also, EXP seems to be tightly controlled. You always seem to need only 100 for the next level, but I quickly noticed that after a couple of battles in the same place the enemies basically stop giving you EXP altogether, or only 1 or 2 points. Doing 50 battles to get one more level is pointless, and this "level cap" system means bosses should retain their difficulty.
Indeed, overall, the game is quite tough, the bosses in pariticular. As the game progresses this may loosen, but seeing as power / unintentionally over levelling due to exploring does not seem possible this time out hopefully bosses will prove a challenge right up until the end. Regular monsters have done for me a few times because of the classic "I don't need to heal my half dead characters until they are nearly dead" RPG mentality - the strength of the Wall is determined by total HP of the front rank characters when the battle starts, so the closer to max HP you keep your party at all times, the better.
So, to sum up - and for those who skipped to the end - quality around every corner, lovely music, lovely visuals, and a very adult, serious story with a seemingly simple but actually nice and deep combat system to play around with. I've cleared my schedule to enjoy this one in a concentrated burst so I'm sure I'll be back around here soon
Hoffe auf ne Demo!
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