u/Conorcat

Just finished the game and enjoyed it overall. I have some thoughts. 55 hours, all side quests and liberation quests, true ending, and I chose Scarlett.

The team building and combat were excellent of course. However I frequently found myself glazing over and getting stuck in the option paralysis with every jump in complexity. I was having a great time managing my 5 or so 3-man units, then was really intimidated by 4-man and 5-man units in turn. I got somewhat comfortable with the 5-man units by the end, but at that point there were just too many options for each character with 6 abilities plus any extras from equipment. Of my 8 endgame units I'd say I was only really happy with 4 of them. This is entirely a personal failing as a relative SRPG noob. I thought my JRPG and TCG experience had prepared me for this level of tinkering and I was wrong.

As for aesthetics and presentation, the game is straight up beautiful. The character designs, backgrounds and animation are all top notch. However, the animations could only dazzle for so long, and I was skipping battles by the end once I had decent enough teams. I would only watch bosses for the dialogue and bad outcomes to see what went wrong.

I found the main story to be a bit weak, but the cast of characters and their own stories were strong enough to balance that out. The music was serviceable throughout, with only the overworld themes being particularly memorable to me. I found that a little disappointing, because the game opens with the best piece of music in the whole soundtrack for the prologue battle with Ilenia. That Bulgarian choir style isn't something I've heard in a a game before and I thought I was in for something truly special, musically. Great choice bringing it back for the true final boss.

This all sounds rather negative, but I have to stress that I had a good time with the game. There were a few times where I felt like I was done and was ready to move on to something else, because I was just struggling with the team bulding. But what kept me going was that incredible overworld. I would spend entire sessions just wandering around, gathering resources, making deliveries, combing every nook and cranny for divine shards and hidden passages. I'd often uncover all the available liberation quests before fighting any of them. I love how each battle takes place in a location on the overworld, and how you can walk freely back through that place where you were pushing to gain ground 10 minutes ago. And the mining minigame is straight fire. My favourite sidequests were the treasure maps, and a big part of that was digging them up first.

If Vanillaware ever go into the cozy game space, I'll be there day one. They've demonstrated here that they know exactly how that loop of one little task leading into another should feel. Just as long as I get to do some more mining.

So many great sitcoms pretend at first to be mockumentaries and then throw it out the window as soon as it becomes the slightest bit inconvenient. The camera crew will be acknowledged once per season at best, you don't get characters playing up to the camera and trying to make themselves look good, there is no sort of structure that would make sense for a documentary, and we see a ton of private moments at locations the camera crew would have no reason to go to.

I would go as far as saying the vast majority of so-called mockumentaries don't actually fit the format. The obvious reason to do it is to get the talking head segments where the characters can quip about what's happening. Most of them would be better off going the Modern Family route of having the talking head segments without the burden of pretending it's a documentary.

Here's a brief list of mockumentaries, all of which I love, that would be better off with the Modern Family format:

Parks and Recreation

Abbott Elementary

What We Do in the Shadows

The Office (US)

I was at Sonisphere 2011 where they debuted Facepalm Mute live well over a year before P2 dropped.

I saw Misha playing drums on The Walk on the BtBaM co-headline tour after Matt had broken his arm.

I had a drum lesson with Matt booked before a show but missed my train, so he let me come hang out and watch the sound check.

What are your cool stories?

We've had our 9 week old Jack Chi for a week now, and he is OBSESSED with both me and my wife. Whenever he plays, he always wants to bring his toys to us. He'll run and grab the toy then jump straight up into my lap to actually do the playing. Even when he's eating, he'd much rather be on us than on the floor or in a bed.

He spends the majority of time in his playpen (it's a big pen for a small dog and has his crate in it), including supervised play with a human, but he just seems to have no interest in independent play. He'll go for a toy if it gets dropped or tossed into his pen from outside, but then it's straight back to jumping up at the bars until someone comes in for him. The longest he manages by himself is 10 minutes focused on a lick mat or a Kong.

It's just frustrating because I'm working from home and can only get any work done when he's asleep. He has a selection of around 12 toys and I try to rotate 4 or 5 in the pen at a time. I'd love for him to be able to entertain himself even for 20 minutes, and I'm worried about him getting too attached and having really bad separation anxiety too.

Any thoughts on encouraging the independence? Do I just have unrealistic expectations when he's this young and we've only had him for a week? I will say the transition to his new home must have been difficult because the breeder didn't have any blanket for us that smelled of his mother and/or litter mates, which might be why he's gotten so attached to us so quickly.