So I finished this a while back
tl;dr It’s a hard one to recommend, even with alotta the unique things it does, truthfully.
epiphanies
it’s a really cool concept, and it’s a great way for everyone to get snippets back into their past. it’s a genuinely really awesome system and the written ones give you that added layer of picking their conclusion in that moment really does help to give a little flash to their wider depth.
secrets
secrets are kinda hit and miss, so many of them provide such a massive advantage or benefit to the player. in retrospect, it really ended up feeling like they were considered part of usual item progression than actual secrets.
the most glaring one is definitely the 7x gaiden. narratively it feels like it has zero reason to have the conditional it does, same for what completing it actually impacts. same can also be said for 11x, which provides you so much gold that you’re now basically able to sandbox mode buy anything you want.
exp
the whole situation with exp, for lack of a better word, feels genuinely incomprehensible. it practically dives off a cliff after promotion and most any scenario produces so little that anything but the latest promotion feels like a major loss, as much leveling won’t happen beyond this.
kree gets hit the worst by all of this, because even as someone who judiciously fed kills to him, he had no hopes of hitting the gaiden requirement level.
i think if the intent with exp is to limit how hard people snowball with big growths (which is just my guess lol), the growths are more the issue, as it’s easy to snowball due to them, anyways.
unit/skill disparity
mid to lategame many joiners felt odd. often they were understatted pretty heavily or exceptionally higher, and often there was a big gap between units who joined even relatively close to one another.
biggest example here would be the Buck/Hart/Doe trio, who compared to Gora’Luna were statistically jobbing incredibly hard.
the same goes for many of the epiphanies, where there’s one option that’s so much better than the other, that there’s practically no reason to pick that other one.
the biggest/most extreme examples to demonstrate are stuff like choosing between getting to learn dance or a conditional +7 damage, or unconditional lifetaker versus a mercy combat art.
promotion
this goes hand in hand with exp in the unexplainable category. tier one, some units would promote RD style while the rest use promo items, some would cap at 20, others would keep going past that and none of it has any real signs to point to what or why.
in general it ties in to what often is a lack of information in the places a player would desperately want said info.
Shay
he’s probably the biggest oddity in the whole hack. both in gameplay and in story, he’s got so many tools to readily and easily soar out into near-unkillable bulk without much favoritism and perma-paragon means he rams level caps.
then on top of it you’d think a guy with a sword that can permanently kill anyone in purgatory would be a bigger deal than it is. because he’s the one guy who can completely and utterly break the rules of the setting, and he’s just there. in a gaiden you stumble upon at random.
(i only got 'em cause i lucked out on the first try with accessing the gaiden LMAO)
oddities
the member card secretly turning all exp to gold is funny as hell, if a little bit fucked up
ch17 felt odd giving out a master seal so late, when it’s so close to endgame
ch19 has no way of opening any cells
it felt really odd to get a grinding area right before the final map, and the sudden spike in enemy quality also was jarring.
gilded dagger
this thing is absurdly busted, especially when the same chapter you get it in gives you so much gold. you can basically use it as a character’s only weapon for the rest of the game, and be fine, as it oneshots literally every enemy.
the struggle
it felt like a ton of the maps had some “gotcha” where it continues on longer than initially expected, which could be fine, but often these dragged out the maps far past a point of enjoyability, giving a wide amount of them a very unenjoyable backhalf where you know you’ll win, but it’s often dragged out over so many turns on many maps as to be fatiguing to play.
largely endgame spoilers below
the moment
i love the sequence where you re-recruit august by talking him down, and him valuing the words of those hes closest to most heavily. everyone has a excellent bit to say and you can tell it’s taking massive effort to move him away from this ledge.
the big problem is the setup before it, especially the betrayal, just doesn’t feel like it’s there. individually it’s a great moment, but in motion it’s more confusing and only gets more so the more you learn.
Rodius II
yknow how i said Shay was the biggest oddity? that was a bit of a lie.
he’s shockingly not very interesting for a guy who conquered purgatory and is now ultimately seeking to gain control of a horde of raving mad undead. all because of his unending fear of going to hell for what he’s done.
few have actually compelling weight/opposition against him that he often feels like more of a concept of a big bad than a person. this extends to most of his army you face often feeling like disparate squads instead of an extension of this massive, destructive empire. and i’m definitely left wondering with the general lack of charisma he has, that beyond ruling through fear/idolization of that fear. that i’m largely not sold on some of the people having the faith in him that they do. he’s functional, but trapped with practically being the core without a reason to explain why most would align with him outside of the above reasons.
on it’s own, this’d be fine if a bit of a iffy note, that is until…
sequelbait
the final end sequence is sequelbait-y enough to be genuinely frustrating. to preface, it’s nothing to do with the idea that even after coming back to life, it’ll have its own variety of troubles. that’s good, it’d be a good note to end on that saving purgatory was not a fix-all and many problems do exist.
it all has to do with Rodius VIII. he’s basically the lynchpin of this entire plot even happening, and being the cause of august’s betrayal. with 50 way more interesting questions going on. such as how he even knows, why would he risk this, why would he even WANT this, and why should I care much about the moon god?
but any answers to it are all implicitly left for the sequel to answer.
which is really frustrating when this guy is the one both leads have any actual compelling emotional tie against. and not in the way that it frustrates a player into more deeply considering things, but instead just leaving me unfulfilled without having any thematic punch to make it that dissatisfaction work.
