Played it. Was fine, nothing special, but playable. Was sad that Yuri doesn't know Alice, but it allowed them to play off each other again. Hiro was also fun.
The game has a problem with required characters though. It wouldn't be bad if leveling were a little faster, but it isn't. For the talk about skill mutation, you're ALWAYS better off locking skills and buying new ones instead of letting skills mutate. The skill comboing IS nice, but it costs a Super bar, which is sometimes better off used for a Super move. If you know what you're doing though by midgame you can combo super moves pretty easily.
Yuri is totally broken, Alice is broken, Koyuki is broken, Hiro is slightly broken. Grave, Okita, and the main character are good. Most characters are usable if you focus on building them, but with 5 people normally allowed in the party and 8 or 9 people being required characters at certain points of the game, it's best not to use more than one of those extra people. Fortunately, it only requires one or two at most in a given battle so you can make up for their weaknesses with your normal party, but there's a battle lategame which requires 3 that would be a bitch if you don't use any of them.
The game has little challenge until the last chapter, of which is... pretty damn good, actually. I had resets on a few battles there, and the final took me three tries.
Trance gets it right. Total IF game. Great concepts, mediocre to poor execution.
