Recent reviews by TimeHelix

Good game, but I'm really peeved at the AI during battles (enemies & non-combatants). Is it just me, or do the characters you're supposed to protect just love throwing themselves into the groups of enemies only to be slain? Is it the games way of saying don't grind levels when you have a civie? then don't get me started on enemies not having EP limits.... this lets enemies that can out heal your hits just keep healing till you're out of healing yourself (items &/or arts) then dish out a game over. With that and other extremely cheaty behavior coming from Lorence (2nd Lieutenant) in the fight before the final dungeon it makes it impossible to beat him without planning ahead for a 6000 hit(s) before he heals all that back in the next turn... i spent 3 HOURS just going in that circle with him until my healing items and ep gave out.... doesn't help that when you prepare for him you are essentially required to block his guarenteed confusion & sepith-block with items then have everyone use cast 3's to even get a reasonable amount of hits in

On the other hand I do like how they give you a whole bunch of exp while you're underleveled for the area you're in then drop it to almost none once you've made it to/above the reccomended level, since it was a great indicator of when it was time to move on to the next area. I believe this saved me from hours of needless grinding to try and overprepare for what's coming up. I also found that the Bracer Notebook (for the most part) was a good balance of letting players figure out where to go on their own (aka no markers), but provided enough info to let you figure out where you need to go without going back to the questgiver to figure out what you forgot again. there are a couple key quests that don't get put in your bracer notebook for some reason so if you forget a single detail you have to go back and figure what you missed, which the notebook was supposed to remove but it doesn't happen that often though

Good, but let's just say the story's lacking compared to even the horrible. Combat is amazing to previous games (although its just a step up from unity). If you went straight through the story you'd probably get done with it in about 10-15 hours.