the first like, 3-6 hours of this game are the best by far. i LOVED what the demo had to show. beautiful visuals, i wish more "HD 2D" and remasters of RPGs from this era looked like this. and such great music throughout, too.

but before too long, my enjoyment slowly and steadily declined. there were super sudden difficulty spikes, and the difficulty selection felt totally irrelevant in the endgame. i knocked myself down from the hardest to the easiest close to the end of the game and it felt as if nothing changed. i'm sad to say that i am not motivated to do another run with new party members whatsoever.... how disappointing!!

venting a bit: the characterization and motivations for almost everyone in my party felt very flimsy, having no antagonist for the first two thirds of the game felt wack, and then the coterie of goobers they introduce (who we then summarily execute one after the other with very little fanfare) were not very interesting and each had basically no characterization whatsoever. even the biggest of the bads’ backstory was sequestered away as side content. i just don’t think that mainlining a JRPG should leave players feeling so hollow.

as for combat, it felt so much fun when it was just Claude and Rena, but adding more party members cluttered up the game and made it feel unrewarding to try and engage with the parry system. wish it were more enjoyable to control casters, as well. (or to manage them — no way to back out of a spell or interrupt yourself, no way to see what the AI is in the middle of casting until it comes out... these UI failures made it feel like my own team was leaving me in the dark often!) also, pro tip, simply walking up & down is so OP in this game. better defense than anything else.

i was excited to play a relatively short JRPG, especially one i had seen discussed as a classic for so long! but i wasn’t counting on finishing it nearly out of spite.