Welcome to the first installment of Mikhailov's Quick Review, where I review a game as quickly as I can. I will review games I've played in detail, and I will review games I played for less than an hour. So here we go. Today's game is:




Yes the game I recently beat, and I can pretty much sum up the game in two words:

I cheated.

Yes it's a travesty. I regret doing it, but it's a game that sucks so much of your soul that I would not get very far in a half hour play session. Heck, one battle TAKES half an hour plus. This is traditional FFT fare. I can tell you exactly why I cheated:

I'm impatient.

I invested hours and hours into this game before making the decision. I enjoyed every minute of it, but eventually, I just wanted to see it end. I'm sure you will as well, but you WILL enjoy every minute up until then.

I'll tell you one more thing: cheating did NOT help me in the final moments of the game. AR users beware.

The basics are that you're a little runt in the "real world" who gets punished on the last day of school (how could you?). During your punishment assignment, you open a book (you curious rascal you), and you are sucked into a magical world of......magic.

The gameplay is familiar to fans of FFT and FFTA. You don't just attack, you have to walk toward an enemy and get within range. You get to choose from several different species and several different jobs to help you accomplish the goal of total pwnage...

...but don't break the law. If you do the jugde raineth justice down upon you and you lose all of your bonuses and get locketh up upon death. The law system is actually a step UP from FFTA's obnoxious judge that hovered on the battlefield and just removed you outright if you failed to uphold the law (what the hell is a stave anyway...old Penny Arcade).

New weapons and armor are aquired through either the auction house, or combining items in the bazaar. The auction house is inaccessable until the latter part of the game...even then, you have to own a territory totally to compete for prizes. Both methods are quite annoying.

Oh another annoying aspect: no MP when you start out. Unlike previous games, your characters have no MP at the beginning of battle. They charge it as the battle goes on. This is very annoying during the later game when you're getting destroyed and you can only retaliate with basic fire, thunder, or blizzard. The melee classes are exempt, but even some of their best moves require MP. It drags the battle out quite a bit and turns a challenging experience annoying.

Here is the rundown:

Storyline: 5
It's enough to keep you interested, but meh. The little brat turned hero gets old fast.

Gameplay: 7
It's as fun as all FFT games are, but this one will get old eventually....even with a million jobs and quests to do. The MP thing and the combining items thing will get old pretty fast.

Music/Sound: 7
Nothing terrible, but nothing remarkable.

Overall: 7.0
Worth every penny, until you get bored of it.

Total playtime: 40 hours
Total time it took to write review: 30 minutes