A thoroughly entertaining narrative adventure that successfully juggles its different tonal elements (fun pirates! oppressive tyranny and murder!) with a fine mix of engaging, well-written characters with enough depth an nuance to carry the story nicely. And the story and setting are very sound indeed. Well developed without needing scads of exposition or a whole lot of reading, and a solid arc building to a proper payoff. It looks and sounds lovely as well, plays snappily, and while I'm not generally a JRPG player so I don't know how much the reputation for it is actually deserved, but there's no grinding to speak of (and only a couple of areas where hard-to-avoid enemies make for a churn of fighting). Enough meat to the upgrades system(s) to give them some heft, but not so much that they need a lot of thought (and so maybe if you want a game of different build strategies et al. that'd be a weakness), and they certainly never get in the way. The writing is where the game sings, but the package as a whole is thoroughly enjoyable and well worth your time and cash. Very good indeed.
What a thoroughly *nice* gaming experience. Nothing desperately ground-breaking, but a neat world it has some fun with, very nice world art and soundtrack, no irritations to speak of and mechanics that generally hold up and keep pace with the nobody-to-hero arc throughout, solid characters written well - and often wittily, a story that pays off what it sets up and that has some fun bad guy twists along the way. And a proper epilogue/denouement that takes time to show what the effects, good and bad, of your actions on everyone have been, and to send off the characters you’ve followed the past 20 hours. Thoroughly pleasant, and solidly recommended.
