TekGryphon
Banned
Thanks for this review. I always hear praise about this game but no one says exactly why the game is good, I suspected it was mostly people in love with the art style/presentation.
The art style and story is the one area of the game that doesn't suck, actually. It's pretty damn charming. I'm not an anime fan but I did appreciate the story, and found it exceedingly deep. The presentation style was a mess, though. Conversations that, with another presentation style, could have been done in a minute or less, would drag on forever with the stilting slide shows. And, as I mentioned earlier, you have zero interaction. Hardcore fanboys will say this is usual for Japanese games, yet so many of the most famous JRPG/Strategy games do have that interaction, just look at Ogre Battle or FF Tactics.
The real issue is the game play. It's just bad. Horrendous AI that takes away any sense of satisfaction from victory (watching the enemy have like 4 actions left, with a sniper and a tank in range, and just waste them moving a soldier back and forth way back in the fog of war).
I'd rather steer you towards something like Ogre Battle or Ogre Battle 64 (Densetsu no Ōga Batoru). Japanese Strategy RPGs that are superior in every possible respect, both from an RPG and a Strategic sense. Only thing its missing is massive amounts of face time by skirt wearing anime girls.