Alright so now that I'm in the post-game I think I'm ready to give this game a full review.
Let's start with the good stuff, the characters are almost universally fantastic. The character moments the game allows each character to have is quite well done and when tragedies happen to them you really feel for them. For the first 70% of the game the story is good if a bit predictable (at least I thought it was). So I'll tell you how I though the story was going to develop as I played it, since I was totally wrong by a HUGE margin.
The story is set up that there is a giant monster called the Paintress who every year paints a lower and lower number on a monolith way in the distance. Whomever is over that number in age is killed instantly in a event called the Gommage. This means that humanity is struggling to live and continue, because everyone's lifespan is shorter and shorter, making having kids harder and eventually impossible. Every year after this Gommage, the people on the chopping block for the next Gommage go on an expedition to kill the Paintress and hopefully end the Gommage's from happening every again. In this case Expedition 33 is a group of 32-year-olds going to give killing this paintress a try, since they'll die in a year either way, seems like a good set up for a story.
Turns out life outside the city is filled with creature and monsters and all kinds of dangers. And one of the first bosses only attacks you if you bother it's flowers. So Immediately I thought I had ti figured out. The gommage wasn't really killed people, instead the gommage turns people into these creatures out in the world. And I thought that would be the big revelation that the paintress isn't killing people, she's changing the world or repainting it in way that turns people into forest creatures to live forever. And it's the human emotions of sadness and loss and death that make her seem evil. So it would sort of play on the morality of that in some way.
Turns out that is not even remotely the case. Monsters are just monsters because you can't have a video game without monsters. Shrug:
So here's the thing. The truth of what this is ALL about, what the whole game means...really sucks. I hate it. It comes out of nowhere and feels forced into the game to make sense when it really doesn't. And it left me scratching my head as to why any of this matters then. The reasoning behind all of it, makes zero sense because it means that all but 2 of the characters have any meaning to anything and everyone else is....well like FFX...just imagined. And it sucks because the game never hints at this being the case through all but the end of the story, and then the story just continues after the last boss for no reason. I really really don't like it.
However the character acting and animations are brilliant throughout. It's a very beautiful game (if you turn of motion blur).
Gameplay-wise the game certainly outlasts it's welcome for me. I said earlier in this thread that being able to reflexively interact with a turn-based system is neat, but if it's required it wears out it's welcome really quickly. Expedition requires the player to dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge for the entire game including "trivial" normal fights. If you don't you will get fucked up, and fucked up quick.
Other RPG's have had systems like this. Legend of Dragoon had a fucking rhythm game attached to every attack, and frankly it was the worst part of that game. However LoD had enough other combat options that you could win without being a great rhythm player. Like a Dragon has a perfect block you can pull off like a parry if you can time it right but the timing is extremely hard and the punishment for missing the parry is so irrelevant that you never have to do it to survive.
The other problem I have is that the character's toolkits all feel too basic and they never unlock great abilities. Instead each character has setup, builder, and spender, abilities that you basically rotate through every fight. Though you can synergize some characters better with others. For example Maeille has a skill where she goes into her 200% extra damage stance if a specific ability hits while the enemy is on fire. Now Maeille has an ability that set's people on fire, so in theory, she burns the enemy, does her flip stance attack next turn, and then on turn three she can use her big attack while being in the 200% more damge buff phase.
But if you pair Maeille with Lune, Lune's first spell sets enemies on fire, which means Maeille's first turn can be flipping into her awesome stance without needing to burn people that are already burning. However none of the other characters work together like this. Sciel is about building tarot card buffs on enemies then using a big attack to make all those debuffs explode, no other character can build tarot stacks so her build up has to be done all by herself. And all the other characters work this same way. And since each character only gets 6 abilties at any one time, each character is just built around a rotation that ends with the biggest spender of it all.
Then there is managing the defense of the game in which you must time buttons to either dodge, parry, jump, or super parry, attacks coming at you. Which on paper it's fine, but when you are grinding levels it really makes earning exp tedious as fuck and when you are fighting at the end of the game with max level characters and the best weapons equipped and all the overpowered abilities stacked together....you can still get rofl-stomped because the bosses attack timing doesn't make any sense. That is another thing to, the enemy timings are so wildly different that sometimes you'll read an enemy easily and parry every attack no problem. And then there will be some fuckers who will hit you ever fucking time no matter what because they are so insanely hard to read it's stupid.
Bottomline I feel like the active defense mechanic is too important and must be mastered to beat the game. Rather than a helpful tool to get you along.
Frankly i don't understand what made everyone suck this game's dick so hard, I personally don't think it's that great. It IS a good game, though, maybe in the high 7's. But it's story and lack of interesting combat interactions make the game just "okay" for me.
