Question 1: How was the pacing in ch 1-2-3 ?
Question 2: How many side quest were available in each chapter ?
Question 3: Did you come across a "boss" fight during your playthrough ?
1: I think Chapter 0 is a bit of a bust (to me it had no impact whatsoever) but I love the slow burn of the early game. Things ramp up when the crew learn of events in Insomnia and then calm back down again when they realize that at least for now there's nothing they can do.
2: I only encountered a couple a chapter, but with limited play time I didn't go looking for them too much. Supposedly running dead-set through Chapter 1-3 would take around 3 hours and I wanted to see it all, so I didn't waste too much time.
3: I encountered a couple, yes, including a new Lucian general type character called Loqi.
Not worried about performance - that can be ironed out.
1) How's the gameplay? AI seem reasonable? The core gameplay loop engaging? Can I customize the control layout?
2) Generally speaking, does the writing and the dialog seem reasonable? Are the characters believable?
3) How varied is the world in terms of enemies, things to do, etc. so far?
1: I really enjoyed the gameplay, and I'm somebody who thought the Platinum demo was pretty pants and ripped on the game's E3 showing. I will say this: The game seems to be at its best when you're fighting more human enemies. Fast moving beasts lead to struggling with the camera and lock on (even though the combat is still fun there) but against soldiers you can really go to town and do some cool stuff. My favourite thing was quite possibly warp-striking snipers from a fair distance away. Feels good.
I think the action is as good a middle ground as you're going to get between a true action game and something more similar to ATB. It does its best to marry the two concepts. I'm less convinced about the RPG credentials, as the skill tree looked pretty meager, but it was backed up by other interesting things in the form of equipment, magic crafting, etc.
So, yeah - Combat is great. I have issues with other gameplay things though, like I think the car is rubbish.
I didn't see (or indeed look for) any control options other than to invert the camera control.
2: I think people's mileage will vary on this, but I really like the dub. I think they've thought carefully about the crew and I actually think this might end up being one of the better-localized FF games. I really enjoy the banter and the energy between the main four guys; they feel real, even if they speak in anime cliches.
3: Chapter 1 feels a lot like Duscae; a few different types of beast around an area. In later chapters a few types of Magitek soldiers show up. It's hard to judge based on what I've seen, but if I had to wager I bet a lot of the game's side quests boil down to hunts: Hunts are pretty easy to execute gameplay design wise as they don't really contain any big story hooks... just go here, kill a big monster. Hunts feel a lot like FF12 in this regard. I didn't see much in the way of other non-hunt side quests.
1) Did you find the gameplay fun? Is there some depth to it?
2) Is voice acting decent?
Think I covered both these above!
I'll answer more later.
