Wow... talk about this thread being dead...
Finally finished the game last night. Clocked at 62 hours but I think it must have been somewhere around 67 as I think I have tried to beat the last boss on 3 different play sessions each lasting 1-3 hours. At level 76 my Schulk missed 95% of the time and then as soon as I get him to lv 77 the hit rate suddenly jumped to around 75%. At level 78 I finally beat him with a little bit of luck since I managed to land my first ever 10+ chain combo on him :lol that and a half-naked Danban as tank!
The game has been quite a ride and it really plays like the epic JRPG I have been expecting since the start of this console generation. Many people have already praised this game and explained why in this thread so I digress. There are mainly two things right now that bothers me...
The challenge of this game is fundamentally determined by the difference between your character level and the enemy level. While that may seem out of question, this element is especially prominent in this game. Like I have illustrated above, even 1 level of difference has a huge impact on your hit rate, and gaining a single level or 2 makes a very obvious difference in the challenge of battles. It is satisfying to take down a mob which is 5 levels or higher if you used an effective strategy, but I feel sometimes the satisfaction is artificial when you know you can easily kill it without much strategy if you come back just 2 levels later.
One of the features in this game is that you gain experience by discovering new locations, and the game heavily uses this feature to control your level so you will never be too underleveled even when you avoid most fights and just stick to the storyline. On the contrary, monsters below your level give exponentially less exp, so unless you grind quests which usually give a static exp as a reward, you can only gain so many levels by grinding mobs. Again this is a device to control your character level so you don't easily become overleveled while exploring maps.
As a result, I feel that the challenge of this game is very controlled. It's good in a way that all the fights are balanced as long as you pick on enemies around your level, but I couldn't help but feel that I'm on some sort of a rail sometimes, regardless of the huge maps and the variety of skills available to my characters.
The second thing that bothered me is the ending. *SPOILERS AHEAD* all of a sudden you are told that how this universe was created and who the gods really are but none of that makes much sense and the game did not give you a deeper explanation. It's like Takahashi just wanted to shoehorn his traditional sci-fi bits as the final twist into the story but it all seems like BS to me. The story as a whole is good except that last part IMO.
