Finished Chapter 1.
Boy oh boy was that a weak and awkward opening. Having only watched Brotherhood and not seen Kingslaive, the plot is stilted and extremely awkwardly delivered. Debating whether or not I want to use subbed English because this voice acting is seriously giving me PS2-era vibes (not Final Fantasy X or anything, just general awkwardness seen across all games at that day and age).
If you don't do the bounty hunts, at this point you barely fight anything at all. Way too little combat, which is a shame because I think the best part of the game so far. A bit confusing, and holy shit whoever thought making Square the dodge button and Circle the attack needs to be hit with a chair. YEARS of Circle-is-dodge muscle memory from the Souls games down the drain. None of the 3 control schemes switch these buttons either, and that's really all I need. I can't switch them in the system-level settings because that would make Square universal cancel and that'd be even worse.
Overall, it's a weird first impression. I managed to clear my head of all early and pre-release impressions and come in fresh, and yeah the opening is definitely weak. It doesn't follow any semblance of a structure and stumbles its way around the whole "tragedy befalls the hero and he must abandon his hometown to go off on an epic quest". I mean, you can't really give off that vibe if you're already away from your hometown. They definitely needed a prologue taking place in Insomnia that had you do that tutorial in it (better paced so as to not annoy people) and set up characters and the conflict well from a storytelling perspective.
Dat soundtrack tho. That'll be one for the ages. Based Shimomura
