So the story, characters, lore and world in this game are incredible. I'm about 11-12 hours in and the game has done a great job of helping me understand the names of people countries and things without shoving it down my throat(
) to memorize it. Games with names like this I usually forget who is who and what countries what but wit this game I'm following right along. The world feels grounded, everyones motivations seem realistic and the groups and countries and locations are all interwoven and make great sense in the overarching themes of the world. It's also done a great job of leaving questions open on certain things and dropping slight hints at answers to come or other potential mysteries. I can honestly say I can't wait to find out what happens next.
The combat system starts simple but gets very intricate. More so than I expected. I'm almost 12 hours in and just got a tutorial about a huge part of it
From accessories, to bonding with blades, choosing what abilities to upgrade, which blade to equip on which party member. Learning the combo system between the blades where you can chain elemental combos off the characters. So you have to say trigger level 1 fire special, then a combo guage appears showing the paths you can take to the next elemental special, wait for another character to have it trigger, and build to a level 3 combo smashing the enemies. This process was hard to get a hang of but really satisfying.
Then they have another combo system about chaining attack types, like if one character does a break then you can do a topple attack, then someone can do a launch attack, then a smash attack, which sounds simple but can be quite difficult.
Now they add chain combos into where you can trigger 3 specials in a row
Never mind the enemies build resistances to your combos then you have to use chain combos to burst there resistance for even more damage.
Plus the skill tree and affinity levels up the strategy even more. It's so insanely deep I practically had to study last night and intentionally found higher level enemies just to practice til I learned it inside and out.
Game is just