The voice acting for Vanille is pretty cringeworthy. She actually does a small bit of narrating a small points which must come into play later in the game.
Sazh is actually a pretty funny guy, although I get a bit suspicious of him looking at Vanille the wrong way since she is a kid. (What are those Japanese like
) Still he is a good character.
Lightning as expected, is quite mysterious but I like her character.
Snow I thought was gonna be a cool guy but turns out he just shouts his fiancee's name all the time and talking about being the hero (like Balthier only not as cool).
Hope is just a little dweeb like Vaan and Tidus (as expected) only this time he is not the main character and blames Snow for his mother's death.
I haven't had control of the last character yet but she is confusing at the moment.
As for the combat, it surprisingly works quite well for only being able to control the 'leader'. You are given roles such as Commando, Medic, Ravager, Sentinel, Synergist and Saboteur. I do miss the good 'ol Final Fantasy black mage, white mage, etc.
Commando is an all out attack job that focus on damage dealing.
Ravager's also attack with magic or attack+magic (i.e. Flamestrike). The Ravager's role is to help increase the chain on an enemy to staggering. When an enemy gets to staggering, damage is increased but as soon as the enemy's stagger meter depletes then it is back to chaining.
Sentinel's are a defense role that get the enemy to focus on that character.
Medic's role obviously is to cure everyone.
Synergists usually cast performance enhancing abilities like Protect.
Saboteur cast enemy weakening spells.
At the beginning, only certain job roles are open to certain characters. The levelling system is similar to Final Fantasy X's Sphere Grid. Instead, you get the Crystarium and level your jobs up.
You then get Paradigms, which is a selections of combat strategies. (i.e. Medic--Sentinel--Ravager or Commando--Ravager--Ravager). I think you can create up to 5 and then you set the one you want to start a battle with. Once in a battle you can perform a Paradigm Shift and select a new paradigm.
I really like the Paradigm Shift. I usually find myself starting off with a Synergist to cast Protect and Shell then sometimes (if possible) switch to a Saboteur to weaken the enemy then switch to either Commando--Ravager--Medic or Ravager--Ravager--Ravager. If I am taking a lot of damage then I probably keep the medic in.
In battle, you also have the ATB bar, right now I have 4 slots of it but I think you start off with 2. Some abilities take up a certain amount of ATB time. Attack takes up 1 so you can select attack twice and the character will perform those attacks once their ATB is full.
If you have like 3 options and you are only wanting to use something like Cure which takes up one, you can select cure and then you can press Triangle to use it even if the ATB bar isn't full but as long as the first slot in which Cure would be in has enough. The remaining ATB that you don't use carries over to the next move.
The battles are quite fast and really enjoyable. The bad thing about the battles is whoever the 'Leader' is (not always Lightning as I first thought it would be) dies then it is game over. The leader cannot die. Also the not being able to control the other guys in battle is another bummer but I think this system works better than Final Fantasy XII.
So far playing through the game, it is pretty much as linear you will get. I've done about 2 dungeons and it has been pretty much one way. The second dungeon every time I got to the next room it looked almost identical to the first and so on - and that one took me ages to complete as it was pretty long. Infact I have loaded up the game and I am only just out of that dungeon.
That is pretty much all I've got to say. I'm just over 14 hours of gameplay and now I'm going to get back to it.
