As requested, here are some more thoughts and such on the game. Please understand that I am only 3 or 4 saved hours into the game. As in…I’m still getting tutorials on stuff, and then I *just* met the merchant/shop owner (who travels around and looks like a dancer from Carnivale’).

So your two main characters (as far as I know) are Serah (pronounced Sarah) and Noel (pronounced Noll). I’m not sure if other humans show up or not on the team, but there you go. There are three classes available for each of them….Commando (physical damage), Reaver (magic damage), and Sentinel (defense). As in FF XIII, the paradigm system is in place, and you can (need to) change within a battle.

But here’s where it’s actually ok and not like XIII. The two characters are somewhat already “classed”. Noel is the natural fighter and Serah is the mage. In the Crystaleriam (typical leveling/power up thing)…you can use your CP to enhance any of the classes, but it (so far anyways) seems wise to make sure to pay attention to their natural classes.

Last night I just got to a new feature. The other “teammates” are monsters that you’ve beaten and retrieved a crystal or whatever from. You can put them in your paradigm, and they help out. Each of the monsters has only one class…so far I have a Medic, Commando, and Reaver. I’ve got a few of each (except for the medic). The way you can level them up is through the use of loot items that you get after battles. I haven’t done it yet, but it looks interesting. So essentially its like leveling up the Summon Materia from VII. Also what makes it fun is that the monsters have “limit breaks” like in VII.

Ok…here’s some more game play. If you ever played Chrono Trigger/Cross, then this should be interesting for you. In this game, you’re gonna be going back and forth through time….stuff in the past effects stuff in the future. It should be interesting. So far, traveling from one time to another doesn’t seem that crazy. You need a particular item to activate the gateway. However while running around in a certain time/place, you can come across a paradox which may suck you into a time rupture or whatever. Once trapped in one, you have to solve the puzzle to get out. There is a “give up” button you can push, which I’m gonna assume just dumps you out into the world unable to progress.

This game is more heavily RPG-ish in nature. There are quests like other RPG’s. So far they are the standard “Can you find this more me?” or “Can you kill this for me?” So that works out. Also, every once in a while this “Live” icon opens up in the top right corner. This means that conversation is going to take place, and you will be given conversation choices to make (kind of like Mass Effect 2).

The last thing that I can mention right now is the “Cinematic Action”. This icon thing opens up in the top right. This alerts you to the fact that during the cut scene, you’re gonna have to input commands (much like the God of War series). You’ll also have to input commands for when you initiate your monster teammate’s “limit break”. I remember one of my dislikes from XIII is that it was very close to a “just mash the buttons for battle success.” This game can certainly be like that too, but for some reason, so far I feel like I have to actually think about battle choices more. It is still very fast paced in the battle however…

More to come
~Jeordam