I finished 閃の軌跡 a couple of days ago, after a little north of 75 hours on it. I've had a couple of days to digest it some more.
It's good, but it's not great, imho. They have a good base to build from, but I think their earlier iterations (空, 零) did a better job of introducing the universe. To break it down:
Story/Characterization
- Having all of the characters being of the same age (roughly) helps in a number of ways, in particular to address the relatively power level issue which often tends to be nonsensical in RPGs (cough シェラザード/アガット/ジン in 空 cough). Unfortunately, the catch is that instead, you get 9 characters to try to wrap your head around out of the gate, which is rough.
- Predictably, they don't do a good job of resolving the characters' backgrounds, which is far, since they've generally not addressed characters' issues in the first game. I don't think they've been quite this... obvious about putting big shining LOOK HERE lights above characters' heads before, though (namely エマ).
- And, well, the story? 零 was actually fairly gentle, as events are largely "resolved" (from the perspective of the player), although there are a number of unanswered questions. 空 punches you in the stomach with the epilogue events. I was expecting something around this level. 閃... takes it to a whole different level. They essentially give you the first section of the second game right up until the first major cliffhanger... and then end it right there. Ouch.
- Also: the tech at the end. Really? Yes, it's kind of cool. But it doesn't really fit.
Gameplay
- Gameplay is largely streamlined from previous iterations. Quests (main and side) are presented similarly to how they always have, so most of the fine tuning is in combat:
- For quartz selection, you now have to mostly pick between stat boosts and spells, since spells are tied directly to quartz, rather than to the elemental level in your orbment. It's considerably limiting, but instead, it forces meaningful decisions, rather than allowing for almost every character to become a tankmage.
- The burst gauge (from 碧) is effectively gone, but it was fairly clumsy.
- The one piece that kind of remains from the burst gauge is a really nice addition: Zero Arts, where arts take 0 time and cost 0 MP. For a player who doesn't normally use arts (like me), they're a really nice incentive to use them.
- Instead of the team rush AT bonus, they've converted that into the Tactical Link system, which I like, as it gives a lot more control to the player.
- They've tweaked a number of the statuses: the notable ones are that unconscious characters are always hit with critical (and so the number of quartz/skills that grant have gone down considerably), petrified only grants a 30% of instant death when hit (instead of 100%), and instant death is now rare (not available via a regular quartz any longer).
- For sidegames, fishing is extremely simplified so that bait is no longer necessary and new fish are caught on the first attempt, and cooking has been simplified so that awesome and unexpected results have a very high percentage with certain characters, both of which are really nice (imho).
Artistic
- The primary character models are quite good, and the environments are decent. Using slightly larger enemy models for slightly tougher versions of those enemies is a nice touch, and one that's harder to do with 2D sprites.
- What doesn't fare as well are the secondary characters (who blur together even more than the 2D sprites). Animation could also be better - particularly jarring sections including floaty walking/running animation which doesn't connect properly with the ground and battle success animation where characters act unnaturally slowly on actions (like high fives).
Technical
- Going full 3D was rather inevitable given the platforms in question, but the drawback is sometimes painfully clear. When there's too much on the screen (such as many primary characters simultaneously), the framerate drops noticeably. In short, the graphics engine they're using isn't very good and/or isn't optimized well. There are times they've done some really nice effects, though, in particular the chapter 4 boss introduction. The real killer, though, is that load times compared to previous games has gone up quite a bit, which makes getting into/out of combat more painful than it should be, and some of the story sections drag because of the amount of time spent on Now Loading screens instead of seeing what happens next.
This might seem like quite the gripe list, but I'm still happy with what Falcom has done. It's taken things in a somewhat different direction, and I look forward to how they move the universe forward with the next game.