It's, it's, it's, it's ARGH! That's what. The main meat of the story is about the characters but all stuff that sets the tone for them AKA why everyone is f'd up in the first place happens 12 days before the game starts. So you get flashbacks. Why? Because they couldn't design a game around those parts of the story. And even then, as you watch the story unfold it's near incomprehensible until... you read the text entry about the shit you just saw in you datalog. REALLY. It makes more sense as text.
Battle system so far to me has been, mash x to autobattle while switching party's role types. It's annoying to me. I find the whole stagger system (do the right kind of attacks to make the enemies easy to kill) annoying as well. I'm 25hrs in and I die more often from a group of enemies adding just 1 more then I do from bosses. And the summons? So far, useless. I'm sure I'm doing it all wrong. That said, to have gotten this far in and still doing it wrong, means they didn't teach me right in the first place.
In a lot of RPGs, the whole 'party leader dies, GAME OVER' BS ain't such a big deal. But in this I've caught my healers sometimes just dicking around when I know they could be healing me. it's like the AI every now and then just drops the ball. At least when you GAME OVER you can retry right before that fight. Sometimes you get thrown into battles with characters you might not have been using so shit isn't set up for them, good thing you can pause and just retry right away. And then when the game launches you into the battle the second time, the menu pops up as if to say "You failed last time since your shit wasn't ready. Here we'll give you that chance now." THANKS FF!# How about doing that the first time!
I have that constant "in a dungeon" feeling. Since there are no real "towns" to visit and the sidequests are all of the "kill this" variety, the world lacks any real feeling to it. I have no idea who anyone is in this game except the main characters basically (I really don't want to know them, they're BORING). Even the bad guys are enigmatic. I have no clue what they really
want (they keep revealing I've been had whenever answers are promised so I no longer even trust what I think I'm doing anymore).
Don't even get me started on the world design and what people are actually wearing. Square Enix, ditch the neon glow tubes and brightly colored neon frogmen outfits for your henchmen. They look like Johnny Quest mooks at a rave!