[DeathsHand]

Originally Posted by Typhoid

I like the fact there is no "leader" in the party. That adds to the "control who you want" aspect. You start out as Vaan, but later on in the plotline Balthier makes constant mention to how he's the "leading man."

And Balthier actually happens to be the one I have lead the party! Zah!
I suppose not having a "leading man" wouldn't have been as important (to me) if the party, as a whole, was interesting... But as each cutscene comes along, Ashe and Basche are standing in one corner discussing serious matters, Penelo and Vaan are over in another corner goofing off, Fran is having seizures, and Balthier is looking at himself in any reflective surface he can find.

Originally Posted by Typhoid

I read it somewhere, and I can't remember where it was, but for the mostpart the loot system is far from luck, and has more to do on your skill, who killed it, and where it died.

Well, obviously certain enemies drop certain items, and there are at least hints about those items in the bestiary... So it's not quite blind luck when it comes to the actual dropping of items...
However, receiving items from chests is fairly random...
For example, the chest containing the most powerful gun in the game has a 60% chance to appear, and when it appears it has a 50% chance to contain the gun (and that's a chest with better odds than most)... But there's one more catch, the chest doesn't contain the gun if you have the diamond armlet equipped (so much for "allows the looting of more valuable items from chests and the like" description)...

The most ridiculous example of chance has to do with the Zodiac Spear (the most powerful weapon in the game)...
You can get it in one of two places:

First is a chest somewhere that gives you basically a 1/1000 chance to obtain it...

And second is a chest in which IT ALWAYS APPEARS... So long as you don't open any of 4 specific chests (none of which give you any indication that you might not want to open them, 3 of which are practically shoved in your face)...
Which basically means that unless a friend or a walk-through had told you about it earlier, you're not getting it from that 'guaranteed' chest...

Originally Posted by Typhoid

The Bazaar goods system is easy.
You sell a certain number of loot (say 4 of A, 2 of B, and 6 of C) and the Bazaar gives you item D. However if you sell 5 of A, 2 of B, and 6 of C, you may get item E.

I know HOW it works, there's just no indication as to what items to sell to receive what...
And while it has produced a few welcome surprises for me throughout the game, creating the highest-quality items towards the end are, once again, basically left up to chance... Some of the items required are so rare that it's very very unlikely that you'd simply stumble upon them during the course of the game... And since you don't know what items you need to make what (unless, once again, you have the help of a friend or a walk-through), you wouldn't know to look for them...

Originally Posted by Typhoid

I'm still not entirely through the game, because I'm doing sidequests, and hunts as they come along. Which I find completely fantastic. The game is so magnificently large, that you can stick to just the story-line and that only, or actually do side-quests, which a lot of the time reveal more about your characters and their stories.

I can imagine if you just stick on the linear line, then yes - the game probably is fantastically boring. But that's like watching Die Hard, and skipping through all the talking sequences to miss the snappy one-liners.

As I got bored with the main quest, the side-questing completist in me DID kick-in and I did a bunch of the hunts and what-not... But that simply added to the time spent between story progression, which added to my forgetting what exactly was going on and who is who and what is what, which just added to the whole snowballing effect driving my waning interest in the game...

Originally Posted by Typhoid

Also, if you don't like the combat system, don't use gambits.

I don't... Well, aside from the basic attack gambits and one character with a healing gambit... But simple attacks seem to go a long way...
During boss battles or hunts and whatnot I'm constantly having to open the command windows to keep my folks alive...

Overall, my thoughts on the combat system itself might not be as negative as I original made them out to be... It's not "broken", it's fun at times, and I definitely didn't miss the random monster encounters...
The main problem is, even if the combat system was amazingly engaging, strategic and fun, it's still the mechanism driving me through a dull story taking place in a bland world involving characters I don't have an ounce of emotion or whatnot invested in...

But eh...