Good man, Otter.
I believe stat growth for the main charcter is fixed, and depends entirely on the questions you answered at the beginning of the game.
You should probably stick with the same alignment for the whole team. Extra attacks get really useful, and there are always enough available monsters for each path, honestly. (Neutral sounds a bit more rough than the others though)
I don't suggest always answering in a certain way to make sure the main character always sticks with the same alignment. It's boring, and you can go from an all neutral team to an all lawful team pretty quickly via demon fusion anyway.
"They're not so much unresponsive as ever so slightly laggy, and keyboard and mouse for something like this is just begging for discomfort. I wonder if I can play it with a gamepad."
I found Bastion's gameplay excellent on the Xbox, with a gamepad, for what it's worth. Very crunchy with a machete and a shotgun.
Dragon's Dogma: Started. I'm liking this a lot. I expected a huge world similar to Fallout/Oblivion, but it's more of a smaller Zelda/Nier like world. I approve, this means that the game has level design! Unlike a lot of similar games, Dragon's Dogma is not really reaching for verisimilitude, it's trying to be a videogame first and foremost. There are secret places filled with treasure chests everywhere. I approve.
The main character is Yattaf, some giant woman. She plans to try all the classes and eventually become overpowered as hell, right now she's a mage.
The main pawn is Helmout the dwarf. Yattaf likes throwing him off cliffs.
I decided to go with only my main pawn and not use any other. Games always get too messy and boring when there are too many AI controlled allies running around. (and the scripted beginning of the game makes me believe this one isn't any different)
Having two characters instead of four means a notable difficulty jump though, so I'm doing a lot of sidequests. Not complaining, though.
Helmout doesn't ever shut up. So far, I like this enthusiasm. He's happy to be with Yattaf, and he wants to help her, even though she's way beyond his league and he knows it. It's as cute as embarassing.
I'm sure I'll eventually turn off every voice in the game at some point, just so he can shut the hell up.
Etrian Odyssey: In the third stratum, dying a lot, having to choose one extremely important choice!
It's funny how both sides are extremely similar. They're full of greedy people that only ever see the main team as useful pawns. That split path doesn't ask any meaningful questions to the team. It's "Blue haired asshole or blond haired asshole?"
The Nameless Game:
If you don't complete this Dragon Quest 1 / Final Fantasy 1 clone within 7 days, YOU DIE IN THE REAL WORLD!
That's the background for a weird DS horror game.
The developers nailed the small RPG parts (the theme song is perfect), but definitely not the rest of the game. Survival horror games love having clunky controls (to make the main character feel powerless), but this is taking it way too far. At no point can you ever feel like a human being. You're a robot with tunnel vision who slooooowly turns around to escape
running walking slowly crawling ghosts. The plot is fairly standard, and there are really only two genuinely good scares in all. Good gimmicks, bad game.