18 hours in...
I have a few - very minor - complaints. More like nitpicks really.
1. The characters clothing does not alter when armour is changed. Actually, I think the chica may have a slightly different appearance depending on what she's wearing, but for the Hero, Yangus, and the prissy guy (mental block today, can't remember names) the only items that you can equip, which look unique in battles, are shields and weapons. That was a little disappointing, as I really enjoy seeing how a character can look with new armour and such.
2. Realistic layouts. This is a very minor nitpick, and - frankly - only a VERY small handful of RPGs that I've played have ever addressed this issue. Housing. When you walk into a town/castle, and there are 25 NPCs roaming around, I expect to see housing for 25 people... it makes sense. Maybe it's just me, but I find it really distracting when I walk into a castle that only has 3 bedrooms, but there are 20 guards, who all claim to live in the castle. Once again, this is a minor complaint.
Now, on to the good!
This game is fucking addictive... in all the best possible ways! Every time I finish the story portion of the game, I'm left with a small country/province to explore... it's like the game is constantly open to exploration. I've found so many bizarre little side quests (they are always rewarding though) that I'm probably a lot further behind other players who are at 18 hours. My characters are all around lvl 16 or so, and we're currently in in the town just after Ascantha (I want to call it Pickmin, but I know that's wrong... it's the first time you encounter the Casino games).
I've been spending a lot of time screwing around with the Alchemy Pot, trying to learn recipes, and I have about 30 different ones now. New helmets, whips, bows, spears, pieces of armour, accessories... just a TON of stuff.
Oh, and I've already found a bit of an exploit, but it requires a turbo controller.
I went into the casino with 900 gold. I bought 45 tokens (20 gold per token). I started playing the slots, with a 5 token bet. Somehow (even though the odds are about 1000:1) I managed to get 777 after about 4 rounds. BAM, 1000 tokens! So I started playing bingo, with 100 token bets. After about an hour and a half, I had a system worked out. On average, given the amount of numbers allotted on the bingo cards (1-25 with a free space) and the amount of numbers pulled per game (8, I believe... I have it all written-down/figured-out at home) I managed to calculate that assuming you have at LEAST 1000 tokens to play around with, as a safety cushion, 100-token bets will yield - on average - 105 tokens. It's a money-maker, but you NEED that ten-game cushion, otherwise you could lose. Now, start playing, turn your 'turbo' on, on your controller, and place a heavy book on the X button. Then go to sleep.
Wake up the following morning, and BAM... tens of thousands of tokens! (actually, this morning when I woke up, I had a little over 300,000 tokens, but I can't guarantee that kind of success for everyone... at least not until I start checking on per-hour earnings, and averaging those out).
While you can't - sadly - trade tokens in for gold (oh... that'd be sweet) you CAN purchase the 5000 token helmet, and then turn around and sell it at any merchant for over 2000 gold. That's a pretty wicked turn-around on cash. Essentially it means that when I get home tonight, I can buy 60 helms, and then sell them for 120,000 gold!
Then again, I know when selling rare items you've made through the alchemy pot, if you sell too many the price that the merchants offer will drop... a system designed probably to curb this sort of goldfarming/exploiting.
Still, even if the price drops, I'll have made enough gold - at an early enough stage in the game - to be laughin' all the way through any shop, for the foreseeable future!
This is shaping-up to be one of the best RPGs I have ever played. Very basic, very simple... not too much customization (skillspheres/materiacombos/chainattacking/etc) but what it does, it does WELL. It doesn't innovate the RPG genre in any way (check the FFXII demo that comes with the game for something innovative!) but it is probably one of the most polished old-skool RPGs I've ever seen!
