I honestly only played this because I heard its OST whenever it was included in Atelier games and I was like... DAMN I gotta play that! And the OST didn't disappoint at all, that's for damn sure.
I also quite like the combat system and overall presentation. The combination of the music and the school's visuals give the game a very dreamlike feeling, I dunno how to describe it really... I also really like how some of the Common's zones look like, and the menus are pretty cool too.
The combat system on its own is very fun, I would basically say it's like a mix of Grandia 2 and Bravely Default. The sad thing is that random battles get defanged entirely as soon as you get a few levels and Fragments. Boss battles remain fun the whole way through for me, but they also feel pretty easy. In fact, I would say they get even easier as the game goes on due to how you can charge Ether and use the Timeline boost to almost give you infinite turns. The boss' style and music go hard tho, so I was happy everytime they popped up.
I quite loved the characters and story more than I expected, even if it's pretty cliche. Hinako is particularly great.
My biggest gripes are probably the overall gameplay loop, lame fanservice, and piss poor translation. The gameplay loop mostly consists of grinding out of social events and completing quests in the Common, and the Common is extremely fucking dull gameplay wise. The translation is mostly poor because there's a million typos, repeated words, and some Fragment descriptions say the opposite of what the Fragment actually does.
So yeah, basically this is a game that feels like it flipflops between being mediocre and PEAK. I will applaud the balls on Koei Tecmo for releasing this at 60 (and not having dropped the price outside of sales after so many years)
I also quite like the combat system and overall presentation. The combination of the music and the school's visuals give the game a very dreamlike feeling, I dunno how to describe it really... I also really like how some of the Common's zones look like, and the menus are pretty cool too.
The combat system on its own is very fun, I would basically say it's like a mix of Grandia 2 and Bravely Default. The sad thing is that random battles get defanged entirely as soon as you get a few levels and Fragments. Boss battles remain fun the whole way through for me, but they also feel pretty easy. In fact, I would say they get even easier as the game goes on due to how you can charge Ether and use the Timeline boost to almost give you infinite turns. The boss' style and music go hard tho, so I was happy everytime they popped up.
I quite loved the characters and story more than I expected, even if it's pretty cliche. Hinako is particularly great.
My biggest gripes are probably the overall gameplay loop, lame fanservice, and piss poor translation. The gameplay loop mostly consists of grinding out of social events and completing quests in the Common, and the Common is extremely fucking dull gameplay wise. The translation is mostly poor because there's a million typos, repeated words, and some Fragment descriptions say the opposite of what the Fragment actually does.
So yeah, basically this is a game that feels like it flipflops between being mediocre and PEAK. I will applaud the balls on Koei Tecmo for releasing this at 60 (and not having dropped the price outside of sales after so many years)