[Daradon]

Well, waited on posting on this because I wanted to play without spoilers.

I'll preface by saying that any FF game is better than 75% of games out there.

But I was fairly disappointed in this chapter.

First the good. Great story, interesting characters, mind blowing graphics and movies of course.

But I found it way too short, too easy, and lacking in gameplay.

Very path based, not much to explore. Even when you finally get down to Pulse, it's not that big or interesting.

Plus all the enemies seem to be palate swaps of other enemies. Not much variety.

The game played more like an adventure story than a true RPG because you were led to pretty much everything you had to do in a very linear sequence. No talking to characters, no exploring maps, no choice in travel.

The battle sequence with the roles and the stagger meter was interesting and strategic, but I felt a little cheated only being able to play as the leader. Especially when my healer would decide to get smart and clear status ailments instead of continuing to heal or something stupid like that.

Overall I felt it was a step backwards. I really enjoyed battling right on the map in 12, but even if that wasn't an option, it still would have been nice to be able to control all characters.

Plus, only having three in a party annoys me. I know it's done for strategic and gameplay reasons, but are you really telling me that if your travelling in a group of six, a fourth or fifth character isn't going to help out on the tough battles?

''Ok, are you ready? This is the battle to save the world. Ehhhh, you guys take a breather...''

Oh, and the music, with the exception of the very last battles, was kinda disappointing.

Ahhh well, it was a good story, with great movies.

EDIT: Re: difficulty even the extra hunts weren't that difficult. I beat all but two of them in my first playthrough, before even heading back up to Cocoon. Just the Neochu and the secret guy in the faultwarrens were left for me when I came back. Oh and the newly beefed up dinos.

I remember in 12, the very last hunt was epic. He had like 58 million hitpoints (not as much considering this battlesystem) and took almost 8 hours to beat, if you could get through it without dying.