I played this when they had an "open beta"/"trial" thing. It was actually pretty decent. It wasn't really on the same level of pokemon but still had a bit of variety. It also had multiplayer map control stuff similar to what Shattered Galaxy did. I had a lot of fun with it but found progression sort of wonky, I'd go from easy, to sort of hard, to impossible pretty quick. They didn't seem to tell you WHERE you should go, no color coding for the regions, no difficulty meter(that I remember). I still had a lot of fun though and I was bummed when whatever it was had ended and I could no longer kill vampires. So did anyone else play this, what did you think?

I'm not sure. Had you not posted this I don't think I would have known that this game ever existed. Now I'll have too look into it. I definitely do not have enough games for my Vita.

Cool! Hopefully when it comes out you can try it. One of the cooler things is you could not get every spirit without trading with people from other regions, since different regions had different unique spirits. Anyway when you actually get a chance to try it maybe you'll remember to come back and reply again.

I enjoyed the beta. It kind of reminds me of a more JRPG take on the mobile game Blood Brothers, with better online connectivity and more location based stuff.

I'm kind of waiting until there's more information around the starting choices, as in most games in this vein, starting with some creatures could really mess you over. I'm worried that will be the case here, so I'll give it a week.

I never played the beta, but did it not have the renting feature?

They give 30 destiny orbs upon completing a short in-game survey after the tutorial. Enough to summon one guaranteed rare, or you can hoard those orbs if you'd like and hope that the game gives you a rare through regular summoning. Either way your starting spirits are totally random; but on the other hand you can "rent" the leader spirits from people on your friends list using the in-game currency awarded after battles, so you really never run into that issue even if you have the worst of luck. If you've somehow wound up with 20 fire-type spirits you can just borrow an earth spirit to shore up your weakness to water.

I'm enjoying the game; the micro transactions seem to be pure luxuries for the time being, and I'm hoping they stay that way in the high level content so long as you play tactfully. I really think they're onto something with the Active Time Battle system. It adds a nice little layer of activity as you focus on who's attacking next and using your skills to hamstring enemies right before their time gauge fills. At the same time, there isn't enough to it to keep me seriously invested for months to come like other hunter/rancher games can. It's a solid first product though, I hope they expand on it.

Though honestly; getting the guardian to the underworld as my first rare probably incentivized me to stay a little longer than others may have.

It has an interesting art style(s) for sure. If it's for the Vita I'll be sure to try it out.

You could rent spirits in the beta yeah. If you rent out a spirit you got some in game currency for doing so. I remember in the beta I managed to friend someone who had a really powerful creature that was very cheap to rent and it pretty much solo'd a large chunk of some areas.

I haven't tried it again now that it's officially out. The beta was ok, but there was no real tactical element in the battle and I was finding myself spending most of the game in menus.

It suffers from the issue that ails too many JRPGs: they take it way too easy on the the player for the first few hours. You can literally enter a battle, put down your vita and come back to a victory screen. It does get better though; down the line enemies are higher in level (as you would expect) and they come in waves of three or four, making focus fire and bringing the right elements more important.

Not that a better game down the line excuses a dull start, but I'm at a point where I'm enjoying the time I can play before needing to stop and let my best spirits recover. Now if they could finish up with this server maintenance, that'd be great. I know I'm in the minority that's up and playing video games at this hour; but this is a pretty serious inconvenience.

I do remember it getting to a point where I would win a battle faster if I lined up my guys to attack whatever they were stronger against, but a few times I would just let the battles play out and I'd win. I think if the battles could be more involved I'd like it more. I might download it and give it a whirl tonight.

Servers are back up, clearly all credit goes to my internet bitching. Add Mind_Less to your in-game friends list (separate from your actual PSN list) whenever you get around to downloading it. It's found in the "Option" tab under "search", because putting that feature in the "Friends" tab of the menu made to much damn sense.

The raid boss is active too, and I can see that this'll be where the whole Free-to-play thing starts to really kick in, there are several bosses that have a timer on them before they "escape", you'll get good rewards for killing several of them, but of course; boss fights are the most taxing on your team, so you'll be putting your vita to rest more often or be using destiny orbs to keep going.

If anyone here is playing the game, you should check out the NeoGAF thread. There's a bunch of active players there discussing game mechanics and trades and potential free orbs from downtime due to maintenance.