I had this on my wishlist because I enjoyed the anime...game looks surprisingly up my alley.
If you remember those God Eater games on PSP and Vita. this looks kinda of like that to me. Crafting so far seems pretty in depth, character animations are fluid and well done, skill trees are huge, and the parties you can build look varied.
Coming in at $39.00 USD seems like a fair price imo just based on the videos I have been watching...anyway I picked it up will report back after a few hours tonight.
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Okay some initial impressions after about 2 hours of playing the game last night.
A few things to get out of the way first in case these are deal breakers for folks:
1) This game is a grind. You grind bosses, you grind mats, you grind characters. There are no "gacha" mechanics in the game but the progression systems are still very heavily influenced by them.
2) The level variety, up to the point, where I am (start of chap. 3) isn't complicated. The maps consists of moving from area to area destroying enemies, colleting things, then getting to the boss and exiting the dungeon. Again, very grindy.
With that stuff out of the way...on to what I like about it so far:
The player archetypes/classes are varied and seem to be very deep based on the skill trees, weapons, and character skills you can unlock for each of the classes.
There is an extremely deep party system where, currently anyway, you can go into battle with up to three support characters.
- These characters are completely kitted out by the player. Their skill trees, items, weapons, and artifacts are all controlled by the MC.
- You choose the skills they upgrade and asign them in battle.
- The party members will trigger their skills at certain points in the battle automatically (for now).
- Not confirmed by me but it seems that you get to fully control these party members and can switch to them when you want during gameplay. I don't have this yet but it is mentioned in the tutorial.
- There seems to be 20 different party members you can collect, at least those are the # squares I have on my party screen.
All the abilities are your typical over the top anime skills. If you liked the anime, many of those skills have been faithfully reproduced.
The most important impression of all: Game play loop is reminiscent of FF: Strangers of Paradise. The best final fantasy game to be released since FF12.
