I've played and beaten every member of this franchise from Spectral Souls to Agarest Zero and loved them all. This one sucked. The combat system destroyed everything! All the other games maintained a similar combat feel that really helped with the continuity, going from one title to the next. This one just took the cute character design and game mythos and ran with its plunder in its own direction. Mega suck and unplayable.
I didn't really know what to expect when I bought this and was pleasantly surprised for the first few hours but then it got a bit blah. There's very little in the way of unique character design, you feel like you're fighting the same little robots again and again. The giant statues that gift you with abilities are really cool and I love the language they concocted for the game as well as the sound design but I don't feel any need to go further than I've gone and that's a bit sad, cuz the game looked promising.
Beautiful game though it did get a bit redundant towards the end and I found myself wishing there was a tad more variety to the monsters and that there were some evil female enemies too as most of the opposing characters were skeletons, plant-based monsters, zombies, male wendigos, etc. Just would've been nice to have a bit more eye candy and breadth (like have in Hellsing, for example). That being said, I spent like 40 hours playing it and thoroughly enjoyed it so my gripes are totally minor. Definitely worth it.