So in between Ch 4 and 5, thoughts at this point:
- Lin is awesome, and the option to 'Geek Out' with her at the Skell sighting pretty much sealed the deal. She's written very close to what a not-annoying real life excitable teenager is like. Actually reminds me a lot of some of the 8th grade Girl Scouts I've volunteered for. Great job writers/localizers.
- Most of the music is straight up good, but that city theme is very good-bad. My only real complaint about the music is that apparently no one noticed they were playing vocalized music really loudly during some quest cutscenes. If I didn't have subtitles on I may have no idea what was being said.
- This game is japanese as fuck, and I love it. Perfect palette cleanser after Fallout4 (and some time in 3's expansions)..
- The storyline structure is a bit odd, but reminds me a lot of many TV/anime series' structures - start off with a few story arc episodes, then mix in a lot of side-story episodes to flesh out the universe that don't directly advance the main plot as you go.
- Oddly enough, the absurd outfit of on antagonist doesn't bother me that much. I guess with how the game doesn't take itself too seriously the outfit sorta just works, even if I would prefer they not used it.
- The game is quite beautiful, and Monolith did one hell of a job on the technical side. What loads there are are pretty short (on hard drive), LoD transitioning is really smooth, and while there's a little pop in it's not much.
All in all, fantastic game. There's minor things here and there, but given the scope of the game I can live with what's off given how much was done right.
Also, whoever staged Go-rha (think that's his name? Divine Guardian or something like that): You're a bastard, a beautiful bastard. I was too busy laughing at my entire party being one shot out of the blue to be mad.