So has anyone played this yet? Any comments on its quality?
Since my honeymoon with the game is long over, I can give you a fairly objective rundown. Or you can look for other opinions in the game's dedicated thread in general RPG section.
The good:
- Level design is fantastic. I stand by that opinion even now. Locations are all very varied, and present different mechanics and challenges both in terms of puzzles and in terms of combat considerations/limitations.
- Party splitting and positioning-affecting abilities (both for PCs and enemies) that you don't often see in blobbers.
- Music-based magic is innovative and fun. The variety of spells and abilities is generally pretty great.
- It's a turn-based blobber with a 7-strong party. When was the last time we got one of those?
The bad:
- It was originally designed for mobiles. The worst consequence of that is that there can only be two enemy models per map, which most cases means there are exactly two enemy types per map (except rogue mages, which all use the same model). Naturally, this limits severely what can be done with encounters. The enemies themselves are pretty interesting and varied though.
- The build variety is very limited. Basically, you have fighters, mages, bards and maybe fighter/mages specializing in enchanted weapons (which are ridiculously OP). There's no real way to specialize them since spells are learned by the whole party at once, and skills only give a rather negligible bonus to damage.
- Itemization is limited and looting is nonexistent (each enemy type always has the same drops, that are usually only good to sell).
- Writing is bad. Though I'd say not Japanese-level bad. Certainly nowhere near Elminage.
