Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Disappointing"

Mixed-sided battles, from the side of being tough in the beginning (giving almost nothing to work with), to being surprisingly easy as the game progresses. Buy the strategy guide to know exactly how linear it is to how it relatively feels in-game by level designs alone. Scenery is apparently beautiful a lot of the time, while character design is something to be desired with some allies and rivals. Monster design is good, looking like it was taken straight from Xenosaga, an old PS2 game. (Note that I do not take graphics into consideration)

Long since the old PSOne times, SquareEnix has gone from having to actively search for items to taking no effort at all in trying to find them by placing them in "treasure spheres", and going through the game there is almost no reason why you should miss even one unless you don't care about collecting them all. It's obvious that they want new gamers to the series, but it hurts some of us who would like to travel that same world in a huge airship, water craft, or some kind of train or car. The developers have taken their time with this game, but I feel like it has let business get in the way of innovation, since that is what it once was known for, the creativity it took to design a full globe of towns. Where are those towns and instead of a field to run in at the end of disc 3, we all would like a world to fly around in.

Story is a bit overly dramatic many times, but if you can get over the lengthy cut-scenes you should be fine. Weapon and battle system is ok, not too difficult to understand, but I think it is a little much just to try to fight a battle against regular enemies. Just once I would like to find a simple town to rest in, but that is a thing of the past. Sorry guys, the world's in a recession so the devs can't afford to build towns.

For those who enjoyed the game, answer the question of why it went down from $60 to $40 in just 2 months of its release, maybe less than that. It was not selling that well, and I think it has to do with that pure nostalgia factor, of yearning for that same take from games like Final Fantasy 7, 8, or even 9. It might deserve more praise than I give it, but going through the game I couldn't finish it, and I never finish a game I can't get into.