As a note: I didn't finish this game, I got bored, the little things kept niggling at me, and I quit after I lost a chunk of progress after a boss fight. Not going to give it a score, but communicating my thoughts on the game.

I hope its not a sign of age that I find it really hard to get through more 'standard' RPGs where grinding through regular fights and ho-hum mechanics mean I need to put up a video to keep playing. As such, I spent most of the time playing this game with a video up in order to not get too bored. I didn't finish this game, I got through the third boss fight, the mechanics of which drove me up a wall, and after getting to the next town and the event there (where it is attacked and you have to kill the monsters) where I promptly got curb-stomped, I realized I hadn't saved since finishing the previous boss (stupid, I know, but save anywhere systems bring out the worst in my laziness and forgetting to save), I couldn't stand to reboot it and redo that boss fight.

So, why was I so bored and irked with this game? Well, it doesn't do anything egregiously wrong. The mapping is good, if a bit cluttered and hard to navigate at times. The story, as far as I got, was serviceable, and I did enjoy the typical 'taste of power' intro sequence where you play as the gods. The game felt like there was so much more going on later, at least from the trailers and such, but the beginning just sucked any enthusiasm out of me to see the latter bits.

So what was wrong with it? Well, there seems to be a lot of systems that are fairly good, but just off enough to be irky. The characters learn new skills to be used in combat by applying skill points (at a rate of one a level), to learn the skills. Some skills are only usable with certain weapons. In example, the main character of at least the opening section can use swords or axes. He has two skills at start that are swords, and two that are axes. Decent enough, you get to choose then, right? Not exactly...you don't get the next tier of abilities unless you learn all the previous abilities. So in order to get the next set of sword skills, you have to learn the axe skills you're not going to use anyway. While it lets you choose what to get, you eventually have to get them all, so functionally its no different than just getting skills via level up. It was even worse when the second spellcaster you get starts by learning a bunch of spells that are used with books...and her entire second tier is a bunch of skills learned for staves. So you either lose all your old stuff and switch weapons, or spend an entire tier (around 12 levels or so if I recall correctly) learning no new spells basically. It is a good examples of systems with a good idea, implemented poorly.

The game also includes a crafting system, with items you can use to gather from points on a map. On its face, this seems rather nice and a way to make you explore the dungeons. However, at least up to the point I reached, the only thing you gathered were items that you crafted into a healing food. I gathered some gemstones later that looked like they might be crafted into accessories, but I quit before that came about. Until that point, crafting places were -really- hard to discern from normal everyday stuff on the map that does nothing, which leads to either facehumping everything that -looks- like it might be a gather-able, or saying screw it and just going through the stages.

The encounters are on map, which I always prefer to random, but they quickly become a chore and a major drain on resources. At no point did I feel using resources to fight all these beasts was really getting me anything. They just drop cash and exp, I barely got any items from them that I recall, and you level up so slowly that you feel like the game is stringing along your powering up. None of the fights were truly dangerous, but they did feel wasteful. I didn't feel like I really -had- to fight all the encounters, but the gear you get from the next store is so expensive that you need to. A lot of the power progression seems to be from buying gear, not leveling up, so you're basically whacking encounters to get money and waste healing items to get that money.

In addition, after the first dungeon and a half, I was extremely disappointed with treasure chests in the dungeons. Every treasure chest, barring the 1-2 that had accessories, just contained bog-standard healing items I purchased 20 of in the last shop. A few contained 'better' versions, but given most of my healing was on maps, and any healing I did in boss fights was serviceable by the items I bought. This was thrown completely on its head by the third boss fight, which annoyed me to no end with its simple, but badly designed mechanics. Its not a complicated boss, he hits you hard, he has a ton of health...and he berserks. By this point, you've found items that cure berserk, and you have two characters...but both of them are slower than the boss. So if one gets berserked in one turn, the next turn could end you if he decides to berserk the other one, as you won't get an item off in time to cure it (hence how I wiped the first time). The second time, I figured out that the single useful item I had gotten from any treasure chest was a charm that prevented berserk. Equipped it on the tank, basically had to let the other character sit the fight out dead to avoid wasting items, and bludgeoned the boss to death over time. It was annoying, it required you to have scoured the dungeon to get that one item to finish the fight, and worst of all, it was boring. Other than the status effect, the boss didn't do enough to be dangerous, hit him two turns in a row, heal, rinse and repeat.

So, in the end, its not a -terrible- game from what I saw, but a lot of the design decisions you run into in the first stretch just don't make you encouraged to see it through. You want to start a game and get a taste of power, see where the progression system goes, want to achieve the pinnacles and beat the big evil power. I mostly got the feeling I was going to be gathering grain and wood to make bread I could have bought, and wearing down walls of Hp that pretended to be bosses.