[quote name='Kirin Lemon']While there *is* a grid to move along between battles, there's no way I'd consider this a "grid-based action RPG". It's basically a fighting game (with a unique, crappy combat system) with RPG elements.
Honestly, I was really, really disappointed in this game. The story is nonexistent (your standard "believe in your friends" BS), the music remixes are mostly trash, and most important of all, the gameplay is fairly simplistic, repetitive, and often luck-based. Oh, and the villains don't get a story mode, and they're only playable in Versus Mode, after being unlocked.
The only real things I can praise about this sloppy mess of a game are its beautiful graphics and the bevy of unlockables available. Pity you have to slog through an un-fun, shallow, repetitive game to experience the latter.[/QUOTE]
This is the exact same impression I got from the demo... you are spot on.
I will add to this that the arenas, at least in the demo, are lifeless and bland... are they FF locales? They just seem like random worlds to me... ice world, some kind of industrial place. I can tell the Moon from FF 4 is there... but the others ones just look so generic I honestly can't tell what they are, and this is from someone who has played every FF to completion. The combat just seems to be "push a button, watch a pre canned animation"... this is really an extremely shallow fighting game judging from my time with the demo.
I expected a lot more from this game, to be honest. Unless the full game is drastically different from the demo, I'll wait until this goes really cheap before I consider it. I would urge people to check out the demo on PSN that hit today before you commit any amount of money to this... I think a lot of people are expecting something completely different.
EDIT: The longer I play, the more it grows on me... so idk at this point. Maybe I was quick to judge it, I have played the demo for at least an hour + now, both normal and hard modes, probably the first time I've used the PSP at length this year. I guess I'm still on the fence.. but my comment about trying the demo still stands, regardless, I would be hard pressed to really call this a "fighting game" myself, which is why I think the initial disappointment was there because I had expected something along the lines of a basic fighter. It kind of reminds me of an extremely stripped down Powerstone.