The first few hours are a huge slog with how slow you kill enemies or just sit there and wait for a parry. Picks up a lot in the middle and near the end. They really had to add that ending though...AM2R overall was the better game and had cooler additions but I really liked aeion abilities. Ignoring shinespark for a bad power bomb sucks but at least they brought back IBJ. Hopefully with Dread they learned a lot from the criticism.