An enjoyable game....but...
I have just finished the game. It has been a long hall. Been playing since early July. The story is quite good, well supported by the cutscenes especial the final ones. The graphics are very good, making it a beautiful game in that regard. Some the battle animations are amazing. There is not much interaction w/ NPCs. Combat can be tedious however, especially in the various boss battles you get into. I spent ~ half an hour fighting the last battle. This is a by god rpg. It makes you plot and strategize. You don't just button mash in this game. You use unions to fight w/. These are groups of up to five characters w/ a max of five unions but also a max of 18 total characters that you will acquire just past the middle of the game. I think they limited it to 18 because once you reach 18 and have the tactics down you can pretty well take care of everything, once your a high enough battle rank ( think levels). You only tell your union what "arts" ( combat, mystic, etc.) to use. The game then decides what specific attacks to use. It would be nice if they decide to do a sequel, if they could speed up the non boss battles it would make the rest of the game flow a lot better as even these can take few minutes to finish. My one real complaint about the game is that if your are like me and get carried along by the main story, you can miss out on a few quests as I learned just over half way through the game. So as you visit each town, make sure you check out all the available quests if you are on of those who have to do everything. In one case you are told to assault 7 enemy positions and report back. If you do that, you will miss out on a supposedly good quest. You have to report back after taking each position. I enjoyed the game very much which is the true test of how good any game is, though I'm glad it's over. It is a long game. It has a bit of a steep learning curve but a little patience goes a long way. You may have trouble finding it as I haven't seen it anywhere for a while. But if you can get it, go ahead. If you take your time and be patient, you will enjoy yourself.