Oh man, I hit the OMG point and the game is SO GOOD.
Between the town inhabitants and their relation stories, the lands to explore, the quests, and the AWESOME storyline, this is starting to get up to XG/XS level fast.
The cutscene direction is so freaking good. Takahashi/Monolithsoft have some of the finest cutscene directors out there. All the major scenes are as well directed and EPIC as the big scenes from XS ep1/3. I've already seen cutscenes in XB that are better than any cutscene from FFXIII
But to counter all the positive, the further I get the more I notice all the little things that are bad design mistakes:
-NO BEASTIARY IS SO BAD IN THIS GAME. How the hell could they miss this??? There are so many interesting creatures and bosses you fight and no record with their model & more info (and if they wanted to go the extra level, their locations and drops) is incredibly disappointing. For shame Monolith Soft.
-Shop menu is TERRIBAD. Trying to compare whether the item for sale or trade is an improvement over your current equip on the characters takes forever and don't even get me started on buying art books you already have and have used.
-Likewise equipping is terrible. When I say I spend 45 mins customizing my equipment, I don't mean I take that long because there is just so much to think about. No, to go through all your stuff and remember to unequip gems on your current equip before comparing it and equipping new stuff and all the other hassles. Basically everytime you want to change everyone's equip to stuff you've picked up lately, expect to spend at least 20 mins because the equipment screen is godawful.
-No arusuji / STORY JOURNAL. Considering a lot is said or happens each time there is a cutscene and how sometimes you can go A LOT OF HOURS between story scenes if you do a ton of questing, it's pretty terrible that there is no journal keeping track of all the things that have happened so far. I mean you can't rewatch cutscenes, so if you miss something in a scene you're screwed.
So basically it's this big epic rpg. Huge adventure, lots of npcs, lots of story, lots of monsters, and yet it's missing all the little minor stuff almost every other rpg has that would all be really nice to have here! :lol None of that is deal breakers in the slightest, but at times the lack of those things can be a little annoying and you just have to wonder what they were thinking to miss stuff like story journal and beastiary.