The game has so many good elements that it makes the shortcomings so much more frustrating. The most frustrating element of all is combat. Half the time you will end up losing about half your life waiting for the protagonist to FINALLY draw his sword and allow you to attack. Combat is done in a similarly frustrating way where you have to click (and time these clicks to chain combos) on enemies, but from time to time you will miss (for no obvious reason) and MOVE rather than attack. But perhaps the worst part is escort missions. Any escort is made of paper, but rather than running from combat or being low priority for monsters and bandits they seem to draw them in like flies to honey. I have had to give up the game half way through Act I, simply because of the downright awful combat mechanics - which is even more frustrating because the story seems pretty awesome and the metaworld is very compelling.
