Maybe it's a bit late in the thread for impressions, but here's mine anyway...
I'm about half to two-thirds of the way through disc 2, and I still have no idea if I even like this game. I like parts of it, but on the whole, I think I'm frustrated as much as I'm entertained.
In typical GAF fashion, I'll list the complaints first, since that's all anybody is going to reply to anyway.
First of all, cutscenes. They look great, and the voice acting is better than I expected (far better than Blue Dragon) but.... why does there have to be so damn many of them? This isn't a Role Playing Game, it's a Role Watching Game. It borders on passive entertainment. During the final third of Disc 1 in the Numara Ghost Town, The game gives you an hour or so worth of cutscenes with only token interactivity to break it up. One fight, a couple fetch quests in a very small area, (where you can't leave to go to the save point at the docks, mere feet away) and a torch-lighting minigame that you can't possibly fail - making it feel more like a cutscene than gameplay. Not all areas are as bad as this one, but I've definitely spent more time watching this game than I have playing it.
That brings me to the next complaint - Load times. It's not the length of the loads that are painful, it's the frequency. The most frustrating ones are when one cutscene ends, and it has to pause and load yet another cutscene, and of course, the much-talked-about load times for battles. I won't go into that whole debate again, but suffice to say that I dash everywhere I can hoping to avoid random battles, just to save myself the pain of the incredibly long fights. Between the shocking amount of time before the fight starts, to the un-skippable animations on everything, fights just take too damn long, and are doubly frustrating when they pop up in the middle of trying to solve a puzzle.
Since i'm on the subject of random battles, why do they even exist still? I could understand in the old days of 2D that they simply couldn't accurately portray the game world and monsters together, and even if they could, doing so would require doing new sprite work for every single monster. However, in this game, there are sections where you see monsters in the regular game world before fighting them, and in those cases, it's the same model you see in the battles. It wasn't jarring to cut from a 2D world where your guy is as big as a town into a random battle, but it's extraordinarily jarring to cut from a realistic 3D world into a random battle with a monster you couldn't even see. (or more accurately, usually 4-8 large monsters) I know the JRPG traditionalist brigade are going to want to crucify me for saying it, but random battles need to go for games built on modern hardware. Blue Dragon was much better in this regard. It didn't show every single monster on the overworld map, but at least you could get around encounters if you were moving to a save point in a rush, and if you absolutely had to fight a monster, you'd know beforehand.
Next complaint - the cities. Why are the sections so damn tiny? There's like 5 load points in Numara, a town with something like 8 enterable buildings. That's a terrible ratio, and that's not even counting the fact that you need to endure another load time to enter a building, and another to exit. That means that to completely explore Numara, you have to watch a minimum of 21 loading screens to simply check out the city, not counting the load screens for the inevitable cutscenes. It makes me pine for the days of 2D RPGs where you looked forward to visiting a new city instead of dreading it.
More complaints still - the Dreams. This isn't entirely a complaint, and I've saved it for last on my complaint list so I could use it to transition into the good points of the game. The dreams are, in and of themselves, probably the best part of the game. They're well-written, often touching, and the way they're presented, with the backdrops and sound effects adds to their impact. That said, they're completely out of place in a videogame, and every time one comes up, they destroy the game's pacing. I want to read them because they're good and they add to the game world, but I usually end up skipping them because I want to actually play the game.
When the game deems me worthy to actually play it, there are definitely things to like. The combat is interesting and even random encounter monsters are strong enough to require thought and care when fighting them. The rings add an interesting wrinkle to combat, too - I only wish more of my characters could take advantage of them. Basically only Kaim and Seth (and to a lesser degree, Mack) have much of any use for the rings, since they don't add anything to spellcasting. All the other characters are so weak in melee that equipping them with rings seems pointless, though I do it anyway. Boss fights are challenging, and though they're a little bit on the trial-and-error side, the level of challenge is welcome, and you always feel like you could do something better after the times you lose.
The composite spell system is interesting, though I haven't got around to exploring it much to this point. The regular spells are simple and understandable enough. It doesn't hurt that they're basically the same as Blue Dragon's. Elemental weaknesses are sometimes strangely placed, however. Why are a bunch of water creatures weak to Earth, for instance? At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, but it would be nice if instincts paid off more than hitting a mob with every spell type to figure out which it's weak against.
The characters are varied and interesting, for the most part. The only thing that bothers me about them is that Seth's personality doesn't seem to fit her back story at all. Hopefully that gets explained at some point. The game needs a character with her personality in that role, so maybe the clash was inevitable. It's not so jarring that I can't overlook it.
The story is interesting and has kept me interested so far. There have been a couple unexpected moments, and some where you knew exactly what would happen. It's a good thing that the story is interesting, because if it wasn't, I'd have shelved this one many hours ago. I want to continue and see where it goes, but at the same time, I wish the story wasn't so intrusive and heavy-handed.
Now, I know this is going to be seen and responded to as a negative post on the game as a whole, but really, to this point - I've liked as much about the game as I've disliked. I wouldn't spend 16+ hours playing a game that I hated. It's just easier to discuss the game's failings than its successes, as most of the successes are spoiler-filled.
