Cross Edge - Finished! Got the True Ending on Hard mode.
Final boss was a decent fight. Puts pressure on you throughout the whole fight, and can actually kill you at low HP if you're not careful. The problem is it's after another fight which you have to redo if you lose. Said other fight's not too hard, just kind of annoying.
Final party was Raze/Anesha/Misha/Aurica. Anesha really was the weakest link but still useful, though the way the game's setup, just about everyone is useful if you use them right. Went in the final boss sequence at L92, ended at L98 (the final itself was like L110...).
Overall, the game exceeded my expectations. The battle system is really one of the most interesting and fun battle systems I've ever seen from an RPG. I've heard complaints that it's slow, but it's really not because you can just skip animations. It's also well-balanced. You get around 32 PCs or so, and it looks like every single one of them has use due to how the combo system works. Since certain types of skills combo into other certain types of skills, you can form your party around combo synergy, and certain people combo better with other certain people, making everyone useful in at least some party setup. There's a TON of twinking options, but the game actually forces you to USE them otherwise you're just going to lose. It's something games like Ar tonelico and Growlanser V should learn from. Item creation can be a bit tedious, but it's kind of fun making new stuff. And there's in-game ways of finding out where the materials you need are (provided you've killed the enemy or can make the item you need to convert). Upgrading and Composite mechanics on top of that just pile on the shiny. Costumes are pretty fun since they give significant stat modifications, multipliers to stats, AND a new passive skill. It's a shame the guys didn't get appearance changes as well, but they only affect the portraits, not the sprites.
The plot's kind of bad, but I wasn't really expecting much there. The writing is actually pretty solid, though. VA is top notch (outside of a few people) as well. Music's solid, but nothing special outside of a few tracks.
The bad? Well, the polish isn't very high, though not as bad as people keep saying. It's... more signs of low production values than an actual lack of polish, I think. The interface isn't exactly the best, but it's not gamebreaking, and the game does neat polish things like keeping a log of previous dialogue (which you can also replay the VA of!), encyclopedias that tell you how to do combos, what monsters drop what items (for synthing), animation skip, stuff like that. Those easily counteract the bad polish things such as death animations taking a bit too long and the interface being suboptimal/kinda slow.
So yeah, really liked the game. The good things far outweigh the bad things, and I'll probably even end up doing the aftergame. Thinking a 9/10 for now, but on the higher end.
Might start SMTDS on the side though.
Ouendan 2 - Not only cleared Yobunda ze on Insane, but FC'd it. I think that's about all I'm going to do with that game. Working on EBA now but Hard is annoying due to being so slow.
