Turambar

My total post history according to my profile is 700 pages long. The most recent 50 pages (7% of all my posts) were made in the last 3 out of 9 years I spent on GB. That's a pretty precipitous drop.

There should be a small symbol on your minimap/compass in the area where the chapter 2 towns are that represent the shrines. There's one shrine in each area.

Just be aware that the story skip and the level boost are not the same thing. If you skip past the ARR story right into HW range, you would still have a lv 1 character but lack any MSQ to do below level 50.

It seems that for whatever reason, all the more involved party banters, ones that involve just more than two party members an discuss things outside of the character story lines occur only after the main story is over.

Fortunately, they are not missable. It's odd that they were not sprinkled a bit more evenly across the game though.

@sunspark: The one you get automatically at the start of a fight is certainly handy, but subclassing anyone else into a scholar and picking up analysis should still fill in that gap.

Ok, the character interaction skits are actually less restrictive and more plentiful than I originally thought. They are not restricted to only during someone's story segment, and instead context appropriate dialogue can still appear even after it's over. They seem to randomly trigger when you swap people in and out of the party at the tavern.

Seeing a number of people here and there talk about how they have two static parties that they don't swap in and out much, I think that's helping give the impression of the lack of character interactions.

Note, there still isn't an abundance, and they're all in short one on one conversation form though, at least so far observed.

@cjduke: The thief and dancer are pretty much the best as far as Chapter 1 stories go. Chapter 2 for the merchant girl might give you a bit more of what you're looking for, plot wise.

When I say locked, I that the thief is the only one that can open them. All of them are colored purple so you can tell right away. No chests are missable as every single area, even ones specific to character stories, can be revisited. It's just much more convenient having Therion be with you at all times instead of needing to go back a second time specifically for the chest. There's usually 1-2 purple chests in any given area out of the 5 on average that will be there in total.

Hopefully. But even still, not being able to do so until then makes choosing anyone other than the thief as your main character a mistake since you want the ability to pick locked chests with you everywhere you go.

I'm about 25 hours into the game right now and have cleared most chapter 2s for the characters. No story spoilers, but I'll talk about some game mechanics and character interactions I've noticed so far.

With regards to character interactions, it does seem pretty minimal unless things really change as the game progresses. They take the form of something similar to skits from a Tales game, and only happen at specific points when you have activated a specific character's chapter story. There's only been two for each chapter 2 story so far between the main character of that story and a random active party member. They might be more involved in later chapters. So, it's there, but pretty sparse.

Speaking of the party, you can swap out members at any given time at the tavern, but the character you choose at the start of the game seems to be locked into your party. I have no idea what it'll actually effect. It might be a Secret of Mana 2 thing where depending on who your main character is, their story's end boss becomes the game's overall end boss, but no way of knowing as of yet.

As seen on the Quick Look, characters level up and gain job points independent of each other, but I haven't really ran into any issues when it comes to needing to grind to get someone back up to date or anything. The main reason being there seems to be a fairly large number of small side dungeons that serve no story purpose, but might be needed for side stories and also give loot. Some of them have bosses in them, but not all.

Sub classes are unlocked via small shrines you find in the overworld. There are icons indicating their existence on the map, so you can't miss them. Each subclass can be only accessed by one character, meaning you can't have multiple characters that have subclassed into Sage, only one. There are also advance job shrines, but I've only seen one, and it was in an area I definitely should not have been in with a danger rating of double my party's level.

While you can only access the active skills for one subjob at any given time, any support skill you unlock is persistent even after you change said subjob.

Feel free to ask any other questions, but I think I've covered most of the stuff that I've seen people having questions about.