LOST SPHEAR

my recommendation comes with a caviat: get it on a sale it is a decent (not throwback) jrpg with lots of mediocre to downright bad components a) the combat is standout good. mixing the ATB-system with positioning (Chrono Trigger style) and the added ressource (MC) mixed with the encounter design is just fun. it is a pretty good system. sadly the rest of the game realy cannot keep up. b) the audio-visual presentation is way better than videos or screenshots make it look like there are some downright stunning scenes and some realy creative music-tracks. the color-choice was great and the backrounds (and units) look very clean but that is (sadly) where the good ends since Octopath Traveller the writing SE spits out is just horrible and by now it infected every game published by SE FF16 had it's moments, but in a twist of fate was just a horrible gameplay experience just like with the Traveller games the writing is infantile, childish, often just gugugaga-teletubby-gibberish with little to no nuance, sarcasm, "fun" (puns, etc.) and horrible pacing. something incredible dramatic happens? 2 dialogue lines later everything is a-okay again. the aspects that made jrpgs good are just missing in modern SE-games. character developement, deep moments, layered meaning, subtlety and less simple good and bad instead motivations: all gone; instead you get text that at best would make a minor happy. the dialogue alone is just hard to read tbh. and at this point (at the back of the Elliot release) i started to think it was "me-issue", then i played the Luna-remaster (buy it: now) after haven't touched the game for nigh 20 years: it is not a "me-issue". SE somehow lost all their writers and let the kindergarten-fan-fiction-team takeover then there is the none-existant mechanical side another core aspect of good jrpgs: gone. you get 8 chars (atleast each is kinda distinct in combat) each having their very own unique skills (kinda like materias just char-bound) which in turn can be slotted with 1 extra mod at a time. per chance these mods might trigger a learning effect and are then perma bound to that skill. which in turn you can do a total of 4 times per mod for a total of 10 added mods per skill. these passive mod-effects then trigger (depending on their level 1-4) per rng-chance when using the special MC-ressource in combat. why this is all based on chance i don't know. why they thought JP-systems were bad: i don't know. you can do some skill building like adding more range, added thunder-damage, added thunder resis down, etc. to a thunder-skill and some more out there effect-combos. i mean it works but compared to 20 years old games is just very little and very weird to build and use. nevermind there beeing a grand total of 2 gear slots per char then there is the mecha-suits that you won't use for 90% of the game. the ressource cost only gets offset later in the game and you can actualy use em more frequent. but they play so little a role that their handfull of unique extra-skills play little role in the grand scheme of things. you can also build special obejects on the world-map (limited amount) each offering new passive tools. like added combat boni, more loot, more rare mob spawns, etc. . but funny enough often don't work (for mcguffin-reasons) during the more challenging areas. again: for a onsale price i think it is a solid game but dear god is the writing subpar (in general). i thought the Octopath-games were bad in this regard, but LS somehow is even more hard to read (no VO).