As a game of running around, fighting things, building characters, and having small character moments, ToCS3 excels. There are endless possibilities for choosing and equipping your party, fights are complex, interesting and varied, and the characters are mostly very nice. The aesthetics are very fine too. About the only complaint is that it starts getting easy as you go along even if you don't use any game-breaking techniques. The problem is everything else. It has a big, epic story which would probably make a good anime. Unfortunately, it doesn't make much of a game story, forever failing to connect with the gameplay, robbing the player of control, or even negating what the player has just done. Most of the time, after winning a big fight, it will turn out you didn't actually win it after all. There's endless material of characters just showing how impressive they are (outside of gameplay) or telling each other how impressive they are. It also keeps making you do things which are far less interesting than the main gameplay. The mecha battles are formulaic and boring, the protagonist's habit of deciding to fight people on his own (even if he isn't properly equipped at the moment) is infuriating, and if, like me, you think collectable card games are an abomination even in an advanced capitalist society where their existence makes sense, tough luck. The fishing kind of works, but why is anyone but Rean banned from catching the big one? Oh, and can we have at least one character who understands and can state the actual problems with feudalism? And sometimes after a big fight, I just want to save the game and close it, instead of having two more big fights and tons more story to see. Despite all this, I would still recommend it based on the strength of the core game. The fast forward function and occasional use of the scene skip options are extremely helpful in minimising the damage from the rest.
A very impressive JRPG. The combat system is its greatest asset gameplaywise, You can build your characters in all sorts of different ways, exploit many different synergies, and the battles themselves are complex and varied. It's a little easy though. On normal difficulty, the boss battles were suitably challenging... if I never used healing items or support characters. And the ordinary battles in the second half of the game faded into triviality except right at the end. Quests are mostly an excuse to get you talking to people or killing things instead of offering interesting choices. Storywise, its great asset is the characters, and to a lesser extent, the worldbuilding. You can see the work that has gone into making the world make sense. There are a huge number of generally colourful minor characters to enjoy, and most of the major characters are convincing 'imaginary people', well drawn and not too strongly stereotyped. The only serious real weak spots are Arisa's early insanity, which creates a terrible impression of a character you're supposed to like, and the 'fat romantic girls are funny' character. The general narrative is a lot less impressive, consisting mostly of Big News Events and Big Revelations. Apart from a little bit on WMDs, the only real attempt at thematic development is "nobles and commoners", and it bungles this badly by failing to include any poverty or any real class struggle, or characters who understand that the main problem with nobility is that they unreasonably get all the money and power, not just that they're snooty. (Which makes Machias occasionally infuriating.) You even have to choose between three banal opinions on nobles at one point. Thankfully, the story is also powered by character development, which is considerably more successful. But I complain about things because it's really, really good. So I want it to be perfect, and am frustrated when it's not. Highly recommended. And the turbo feature is lovely.
