I’m really not all that impressed getting into my 4th hour. All the character stereotypes are represented… the story is fleshing out, but I don’t really see where we’re going with it. They’ve introduced a bad guy, but he’s not one with a personality… hard to explain without spoilers, suffice to say, I’m not motivated to kill anyone yet.

The environments are pretty enough, and the music is good enough, but the level design is lacking quite a bit. It’s definitely as reported by the reviews at this point a bunch of pretty looking corridors, and if there is a nook and/or cranny, there is probably a chest hidden, so poke around, I’m sure that stuff will be useful at some point, they just aren’t for me yet.

combat is shaping up to be interesting, but what I’m not seeing is how much damage I’m doing to things when I hit them, yes there is combat text on the screen to tell you but there is so much going on its hard to see, so it’s not exactly clear what your best attacks are. It’s still a lot of ‘auto-battle’, and not having a good sense of what is happening around the party leader, maybe because the camera is so tight, or maybe its because there is too much going on.

Its going to be interesting when they let me start bringing in the saboteur and synergizer (or whatever its called), it seems like it would be a challenge to monitor a set of buffs/debuffs to plan your paradigm shifts… it’s tricky enough keeping your eye on everyones health.

The friendly AI seems like it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing at all times though, so while I may not see what they’re doing exactly, I trust them to be doing the right thing for the paradigm I’ve set, the only time I’ve seen it fail was likely because I waited too long to shift… so, my bad…

It is going to be a long day of work tomorrow, I can’t wait to get back to it.