I do understand that the computer games are just pixels on the screen, bits in the memory. I do not experience any moral problems when the computer gives me a five- or six-digit number of casualties in a battle I just won, nor when my spaceships exterminate the population of a whole inhabited planet. I do understand that JRPGs are a product of Japanese culture, and even my limited knowledge lets me know that in many aspects it strongly differs from the cultures I'm more familiar with. I also understand that the computer games are a commercial product addressed to a specific audience. Still, I have a feeling that the authors of this game would immensely profit from a long and productive talk to a patient and carefully listening doctor of psychiatry. Other than that - a really good game. Interesting levels with many secrets to find, interesting mechanics, good graphic and music. You are invited to grind, but not forced to. A quality product.
The game is surprisingly good in the most important aspect: the tactical battles. All the heros are very different from each other (and very interesting to play with) and the battles are brutally hard (ok, some of them) (and you can play on a lower difficulty level, if you wish). Which might also mean I have spent too short time at the town, preparing for the fights. Anyway, the pleasure of seeing the Fomorian Ancient, reading its stats, freaking out, coming up with a strategy, and finally kicking up its butt was... noticeable. Also, the in-game humor is not always cringeworthy. On the other hand, the game is also full of minor bugs and problems: 1. Achievements do not always activate when they should (for example, I have an achievement for finishing the fourth chapter, but not for the first three...). 2.Additional victory conditions do not always activate when they should. 3. The fishing minigame is awful, will they pay for my mouse? 4. The inability of saving at will is bad - I understand the reason why one cannot save before (or during) every text adventure, but one should have an ability to Save_and_quit at any time (ok, maybe not during battles, but between any dungeon nodes). Such a save could be deleted on reloading, so no save-scumming would be possible. As it is, there are times when we have to choose between quitting and losing all progres from the last save, coming back to town to save there (losing several days in-game), or playing forth through several more battles, which could easily take an hour of more. 5. Another thing I would change is the crafting kingdom quests - I'm not going to craft 10 basic weapons, it just doesn't make sense. If I do not fight in the battles - I do not have money and materials for crafting; if I do - I have plenty of weapons from spoils. Crafting many trinkets makes sense, some of them are very useful and you can give them to every hero, but every weapon is used by one hero only, no way 10 of them (in other words, all of them) need a basic weapon. The kingdom quests should reward you for the _useful_ things you do. 6. And the loading times were already mentioned by other reviewers. I believe at least several of those points will be addressed by the developers. Then this will be a five star game for me.
The one thing every potential buyer should know: you will only play once. In the game you are running from town to town (or from oasis to oasis) with your caravan. You trade, fight bandits and the like, do quests for townpeople, enjoy (or not) random events, and follow the main questline of the game. However: - there are about ten random events (ok, maybe fifteen, I haven't counted), and after half an hour you will see them all, - there are about ten quests plus another twenty in the main questline, and they will not change from game to game (no random quests), - obtaining money (the main job in the game) is ridiculously easy, you can simply repeatedly sell and buy the same goods to/from a merchant until he is out of money. Yes, you could also buy where it is cheap and sell where it is expensive, but it is a much slower road to riches. The only reason to ever leave the town is to find some merchant who still has any money... I could also add that the gameplay is not very interesting (for example, our heroes have many skills, but once you apply a skill all the skills will become unusable for a time - which means that for each character you will only use one skill ever, the best one). But, frankly, no need to write further. No replayability, no challenge, avoid.
