First i must apologize for my very bad English, however i liked this game so much, that i couldn't mentioned the flaws.
this is a very good game. so don't think i didn't enjoy the game, i had a lot of fun. but somethings seems wrong
i played a lot of rpg games, from ff 1-12, gothic, risen, dragon age, wizardry 7,8 and a lot more.
in my opinion there are some serious mistakes in this game.
1- The battle system dose not have anything special except it look very cool, most skills seems useless, for example when status effects last for 3 or 4 turn why someone should use b-bone intensity? Why should i use knee smash? Sleeping gas and Nuclear blast have the same damage, same cost, however one have status effects too. There are a lot of such skills. you simply use group attack skills all the time, if any one survived, use auto battle, heal afterward, then repeat.
You worked so hard for this game, But didn't bother with battle system? its very strange.
2- When i first started the game, i said man this is epic, this is very good. however as i played more, it seemed, some clever writer was bored and wanted to finish this as fast as he could. So, he just glue things together, in the end i was just wanted to finish the game, i was tired.
3- Mini games, why for Arcadia sake you had so much mini games? don't get me wrong the mini games were fun and well designed, however i must not finish 200 mini games to advance the plot, you should know as well as every one else not every one like to play mini games, it is a big mistake to force everyone to play every mini games,
4- Puzzles, its very important to have variety of puzzles not only memory puzzles, there were some other type of puzzles but not that much, it was all about your memory, if you remember then you are winner, sadly i am very weak in this aspect. If you want someone absolutely read the history of your world, you should not force them to remember names, you should force them to understand the concepts, They should learn about history to learn how the world worked, in this realm, its not important who actually did this things, forget about your history exams in real life. For example, instead of asking, what minator learned from his grandfather, you asked what was his grandfather name, instead of asking what inspired Dalton to name his child after Sylvia, you asked what was her Last name. It was sad that even developers didn't care about history of their own game. or maybe i am wrong, i hope i am.
5- There was nearly no side quest, i dunno why, this game have a lot of potential for side quests but at the end, there was only very minor side quests, instead of adding "back stories" to the "main story", you could make side quests that cover most of them (except b-bone he is too important, because he "know all"). I guess it was because of fear, developers thinking, if players don't know this side stories, they won't love the characters, but if you create your characters and give them life, people will track all side quest and side stories, because they want to" know all" too. Don't get me wrong, i was very attached to characters in this game, i loved every one of them. But its the matter of choices; if someone want to learn that skill, he must do that side quest. Lack of optional super boss, was another important subject, that's why people replay a game, they are easy to add they add flavor to the game. you also added crafting but you forget about material hunting, you can buy every material with money. except elements witch are one of a kind anyway.
7- The most annoying part is that you can't travel, you don't chose, you just follow the story. character have schedule and player must follow it exactly, the world map is what i was hoping for, all the time. sadly i didn't get it.
conclusion: RPG is all about choices, if you can't chose you are not playing RPG, you are playing a novel. this is why i only play strategy and rpg games, since i can chose, i can develop my character, i can chose to equip that weak armor, because it gives ME awesome strength, or i can chose to give my Mage a plate armor also MY intelligence will be lowered; adding such a simple choices will give the player, some sense of control over his character. I can chose to back track to x dungeon, so i can find all of its secret; adding a world map or any other means of free traveling, give the player sense of freedom. this game was a lot like FPS rather than a RPG, RPG is not only about leveling up and equipping the best armor possible, this is what happens in shooter games you chose the best gun and you shoot the hell out of everyone.
again i apologize for lack of English knowledge. i tried a lot to make this post readable. you guys can be great game designer, better start it now than latter ;).
i also apologize for not pointing out the good things, however i have a habit to criticize good things, because they can be better.
thanks for reading this, hmm well if you can read it.