The Church of Dan

I’m only on Chapter 4 so far, so this will be my ‘first impressions’ blog.

I’ve got the ps3 version, and an hdtv.  I’m about 8-10 hours in so far.

The minute I put the game in I was pulled in to a pretty nice introduction, flying around, scenes from the trailer, it looked really nice.  After a couple of minuets of that, I got the game going.  The story is pretty interesting.   Visually, it’s the most amazing game I have played, hands down – the models, the animation, its very well done.

The music is OK – at least so far, it hasn’t blown me away.

The battle system is something new, and at first just pressing ‘x’ over and over again just felt dull, but things got a bit more interesting eventually.  Paradigms and the class system, I like it.  At first I didn’t like the idea of controlling just the leader, but once more class combinations open up, it gets really cool.   I actually found it challenging against a boss or two up until now, getting used to the battle system can be challenging.

The game introduces ‘auto-attack’ which preselects the combination of attacks best to use vs a specific enemy, and if you use the Technique ‘Libra’ then it fine tunes the ‘auto attack’ to do be more effective.  I kind of wish it wasn’t there though, or if we just got to preset our auto-attacks, you can use your abilities menu instead and select it for yourself – but it just doesnt feel the same knowing auto attack is right there.

Now on to some of the ugly.  The game is one big epic dungeon (at least so far).  So you go from a cutscene, to walking down a path, to fighting mobs, to another cutscene.. etc.  There are no towns, it’s quite depressing.  That old FF feel where you’d go to to towns, talk to people, you won’t find that here.  For an RPG, it’s way too linear for my liking.   I know a J-RPG isn’t supposed to have a Dragon Age feel, but games like the Grandia series (minus Xtreme because Dean Cain ruins the whole voiceacting thing), but past FF games, you had options or at least free world movement.  The game feels like it’s just playing itself, it looks damn cool to watch though, so get popcorn.  But thats about all, it looks cool, has a good story, and a great battle/class system.  But you won’t find towns or anything exciting – at least not 8-10 hours in.