Ok, so this game was put out by Atlus, and while it wasn't solely developed by them, they had a lot of influence on the story and stuff so it peaked my attention right away. Now, after about 6 hours or so, wanna give some starting thoughts. Mild spoilers I guess if you wanna go in completely clean I suppose?
1. Story is really good so far, and main character is awesome.
Now, this was billed as being time travel, but that's kinda not the main point. It's actually more reminiscent of Chrono Cross than Chrono Trigger. You get this book, the white chronicle, from your fantasy CIA boss, and after you almost die you are transported to Historia, which is where the story is laid out in some graph-like fashion. You have two histories going side by side; standard history and alternate history, all stemming from one decision (whether you stay part of the fantasy CIA or go with your big bro Rosch's brigade). Now, instead of just choosing one side to go down and forgetting about the other, sometimes you will need information that you can only get in the other history to help you out on this one, for example: there's a border you need to cross, and you don't have passports. You meet up with a traveling band of performers, and they agree to sneak you in, but you get caught since you're not the same race (they're these weird beastmen dudes) and you don't know any tricks. So you go back to the other history, where a soldier named Kiel knows how to SWORD DANCE (which does not translate into regular swordsmanship, much to his chagrin) but you learn a bit, and you go back to the other history where you show off to the border guard, who lets you pass. Sometimes it can be a little weird in what you need to actually DO, but I like the system.
Main character is great though. Instead of being a silent protagonist, He's a calm, somewhat distant spy who knows how to act and how to behave in certain situations. He does not act like an idiot while other party members debate on what they should do, and he even gets things before the other people in your party for once! O: The first time he learns of the book's power, he mentions how it's probably really dangerous and that people shouldn't have the power to go back in time. Which is correct, of course, but it's pretty refreshing to hear a main character say that.
2. Battle system's pretty unique.
The battle system is turned based, as per usual, but it's done like I aint never seen before. The enemies are laid out in a 3x3 square. You can push, pull enemies into different squares, and even the same square, where you will do damage to multiple enemies. and you can rearrange your turns, so sometimes you'll have this:
Enemy
Party Member 1
Enemy
Party Member 2
Party Member 3
now enemies reset being in the same square during their turn, but party member one can switch his turn with the enemy down below him, which will give the enemy his turn, but allows all the party members to attack in turn, which means a bigger combo which means MORE MONEY. No random battles either, you run into enemies on the field, and if you hit them with your sword (sometimes it takes a few hits) and they'll get stunned, and you'll go into battle with 4 turns, which, if you utilize the grid effectively, you can kill the majority of them before the even start. Sometimes it's kinda easy for them to get the hit on you, though :/
3. not everything's great, though!
There are a few problems. As I mentioned earlier, the logic they want you to follow can be kinda hard to figure at times, and sometimes you'll accidentally skip to a time where you need to watch a few cutscenes before getting to the part where you'll change things. There is a fast skip button, but that isn't fast enough for things like the ... that pops up quite a bit. Some enemies don't actually move at all, which is kinda missing the point, and from what I've seen and heard so far, there is a distinct lack of enemy art (mostly recolors the more you go through, especially army dudes) and some of the character art is kinda... a little too anime, maybe? That dude on the bottom right of the box art is supposed to be a mercenary for crying out loud
It's pretty sweet though, so hopefully you pick it up, as it seems not a lot of people here have :P
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