That Chocobo theme is so bad vocally but man, I admire them for trying something like that out. It's neat. The instrumental bit was nice.
And hmmm at that battle video. I hope that's just quick cutting to the "cool flashy stuff" in the battles because the constant camera stopping and fixating on staggered enemies irritated me a little in FFXIII... and it looks like the camera pans are longer here. Perhaps it's a consequence of the player continuously using offensive AoE attacks as well.
Serah's animation speeds are surprisingly quick (which is a good thing!). I might have to time her cast speeds and physical attack speeds when I get the game in January. It's too bad I didn't get a good look at Noel's, but it's likely because he wasn't the party leader. My secret hope is that he animates as quickly as Asbel Lhant (different series, different developer, whatever, I just liked how Asbel animated and how swift his movements were a lot), but he's probably going to move as fast as either Hope or Snow. :/
I really want to time Noel's though. There's something about Noel that makes me look forward to using him (it's probably because he dual-wields and dual-wielding characters are usually fun to play with). Serah, I don't care about as much.
Also, I want to throw that moogle around or put it in a cannon or throw it into things.
That thing just screams Omochao to me.
Regarding the story, ehhhh... you can tell that I don't care about the story much since I'm fixated on presentation and battle stuff (which I hope is going to be better). I'm sure the script is going to be underwhelming considering the mastermind behind it.
Snow is low tier or situation tier.
Yup. Emphasis on "situation tier".
Yeah, Snow is really pretty good as a Sentinel but the other characters surpass him in ther COM and RAV department.
At least has good Syn and Sab moves.
The only problem with Fang as a Commando is that her final attack is very long so I tend to just stop her from attacking before she does it.
Agreed. Snow is mostly good for support. His animation speeds and lack of power hold him back from reaching his potential, and we all know what happens when you give characters accessories to increase base stats (problematic for battle rankings and thus drop rates). Snow is pushed into inadequacy in terms of physically attacking and offensive magic when the girls begin leveling up more.
In terms of base stats like HP and strength (for countering), he is not the best Defender in comparison to Fang... maybe the second-best by a very small margin. But since you're using Fang for attacking anyway, the best alternative is Snow (his animation speed to go into -guard position helps too). His place in the game is to tank. If I had Fang in the party, I resorted to using him as a Defender to reduce overall damage caused to the party since Fang is busy doing something else. Also for Provoking (though provoking is
not a good idea when you're fighting Shaolong Guis when they're dazed).
Overall, Snow is a very good support character because he has the ability to tank when needed. He's also a great Healer, and I find Curasa very useful. Snow's initial cast may be slow (ex: 1.5 seconds), but his subsequent casts of single spells are really friggin' fast, like half a second! The unfortunate thing is that it takes a little while for him to stop casting and then initiate refilling the ATB gauge. Regardless, because of his fast-as-hell casting speeds for both Jammer and Healer skills, his full rounds of casting are generally the fastest out of all the characters... maybe taking about 4-5 seconds total for an entire turn.
Also, using auto-attack/auto-cast is boring. The AI picks some dumb attacks sometimes. If all I want to do is stagger something really fast, and it has no elemental resistances, just cast 5-6 single Thunder spells. Done. They are
the fastest spells in the game to cast, no question. The higher-level AoE offensive spells like -ra and -ga spells
should be used if: more than one enemy is close to being staggered, you can allocate the time to cast it, and you can pick off the enemies quickly after staggering them because they're basically cannon fodder. The higher level spells take up too much time anyway. :/
And yeah, I always cancelled Fang's final attack since the animation was too long. She could be doing something else.
I don't think I've used Snow since I got the ability to change party members. >.>
You will if you do postgame/missions. :O