mechanically this game feels like when you go over to your friend who's really into board games' house and he tries to get you to play this really complex board game with a bunch of rules and systems. i ended up spending the majority of my time trying to decipher and understand how to even begin to play this game efficiently before i could even approach enjoying it. in many ways this game felt like homework because of how often i had to cross reference different guides, forum threads, and general stat sheet spreads. once i got past all of that? the last 10 or so hours of gameplay that remained was fine i guess. i can forgive an early 2000s JRPG/SRPG for being clunky, but i can't lie and say getting to the understanding part was fun. it was a shitload of grinding and oftentimes for a plot and characters i didn't give much of a shit about.
story-wise this game would benefit from either a tighter and plottier narrative, or just make the entire thing an inner journey for laharl. i was mostly on board with the latter, then the game gets side-tracked by "oh no this human wants to challenge laharl!" like four times in a row until we finally get to an angels vs. demon conflict. it's weird to call some of the only external conflict in the game "padding", but what does a character like gordon or jennifer really contribute to the story? the only three characters that get any level of intrigue are, of course, the main trio. why am i supposed to give a shit that jennifer's dad is actually the evil general guy or whatever. i didn't. strongest stuff was in the character establishing and building, so i see hope for future entries to focus on those smaller stake things than to go for the big epic conflict between heaven and hell.
i feel 2.5/5.0 is probably a generous rating considering how little fun or joy this evoked out of me, but it also feels like this is just a game i largely didn't get. maybe it's not for me, but it feels like SRPG in name alone and was more meant to showcase the whole "you can do crazy amounts of damage if you grind your eyeballs out!!". yeah, okay, but can you get me to care about your characters? game suffers from the fire emblem 8 problem of "it's by far in your best interest to just focus on grinding up one character than trying to build up a team of reliable units", and i guess it's on me for wanting something different than that. i'm hopeful future entries will either refine the gameplay system to make it more enjoyable to get to the part of mastering all the different systems and mechanics, or maybe the narrative more compelling with better written characters. either one would make this a much more enjoyable timesink than it currently is.
story-wise this game would benefit from either a tighter and plottier narrative, or just make the entire thing an inner journey for laharl. i was mostly on board with the latter, then the game gets side-tracked by "oh no this human wants to challenge laharl!" like four times in a row until we finally get to an angels vs. demon conflict. it's weird to call some of the only external conflict in the game "padding", but what does a character like gordon or jennifer really contribute to the story? the only three characters that get any level of intrigue are, of course, the main trio. why am i supposed to give a shit that jennifer's dad is actually the evil general guy or whatever. i didn't. strongest stuff was in the character establishing and building, so i see hope for future entries to focus on those smaller stake things than to go for the big epic conflict between heaven and hell.
i feel 2.5/5.0 is probably a generous rating considering how little fun or joy this evoked out of me, but it also feels like this is just a game i largely didn't get. maybe it's not for me, but it feels like SRPG in name alone and was more meant to showcase the whole "you can do crazy amounts of damage if you grind your eyeballs out!!". yeah, okay, but can you get me to care about your characters? game suffers from the fire emblem 8 problem of "it's by far in your best interest to just focus on grinding up one character than trying to build up a team of reliable units", and i guess it's on me for wanting something different than that. i'm hopeful future entries will either refine the gameplay system to make it more enjoyable to get to the part of mastering all the different systems and mechanics, or maybe the narrative more compelling with better written characters. either one would make this a much more enjoyable timesink than it currently is.