<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Still no plot information, mainly because my friend's too cheap to let anyone else touch his Playstation 2.
The Sphere system is pretty good. It's *really* big which means while you can technically have everyone learn Ultima and everything else in the game, it'll take a VERY long time (however, only Yuna can summon). It's kind of like Grandia 1 in that you are constantly gaining levels, but it takes a lot of steps to get to something big. You don't have a chance to go into other character's sections of the sphere until a long time (due to key locks and just the sheer amount of AP you need) so that makes character pretty unique. I.e. Yuna's not going to become a strong physical fighter anytime soon.
Character balance wise, I'm not sure how the stuff about Lulu about strong circulated around, but it seems to me that Tida and Yuna are definitely the strongest characters in the game.
The voice acting, I know all you Japan-rules fan will probably complain about the dubbing, though honestly the Japanese voices are nothing to write home about. They all sound very typical for the roles they're supposed to be.
Music is okay. I like the beginning piano piece, and the battle music and boss music is pretty good, which is important since you will be hearing that a lot. There's also that one place before the ruins with mech stuff (Rock Dragon type 89 and so on) that has a really good theme. Music does seem to suffer from, once again, having too many tracks and not enough time.
I find the backgrounds in this game to be more impressive than the firework Summons and whatnot.
Finally, even though Yuna can walk on water, she still can't dance. Dancing with a staff just looks... wrong... even if it's supposed to be some kind of ritual (presumably).
<b>Spoiler Message:<b>
<span style="background: black; color: black;">Oh yeah, they made it really hard to jump ahead with low level characters. You've to do 140K damage to Sin's first form in around 12 rounds, and he's immune to melee (because he's too far away). And yes, that means hitting 9999 each round is probably not enough...</span></div>
The Sphere system is pretty good. It's *really* big which means while you can technically have everyone learn Ultima and everything else in the game, it'll take a VERY long time (however, only Yuna can summon). It's kind of like Grandia 1 in that you are constantly gaining levels, but it takes a lot of steps to get to something big. You don't have a chance to go into other character's sections of the sphere until a long time (due to key locks and just the sheer amount of AP you need) so that makes character pretty unique. I.e. Yuna's not going to become a strong physical fighter anytime soon.
Character balance wise, I'm not sure how the stuff about Lulu about strong circulated around, but it seems to me that Tida and Yuna are definitely the strongest characters in the game.
The voice acting, I know all you Japan-rules fan will probably complain about the dubbing, though honestly the Japanese voices are nothing to write home about. They all sound very typical for the roles they're supposed to be.
Music is okay. I like the beginning piano piece, and the battle music and boss music is pretty good, which is important since you will be hearing that a lot. There's also that one place before the ruins with mech stuff (Rock Dragon type 89 and so on) that has a really good theme. Music does seem to suffer from, once again, having too many tracks and not enough time.
I find the backgrounds in this game to be more impressive than the firework Summons and whatnot.
Finally, even though Yuna can walk on water, she still can't dance. Dancing with a staff just looks... wrong... even if it's supposed to be some kind of ritual (presumably).
<b>Spoiler Message:<b>
<span style="background: black; color: black;">Oh yeah, they made it really hard to jump ahead with low level characters. You've to do 140K damage to Sin's first form in around 12 rounds, and he's immune to melee (because he's too far away). And yes, that means hitting 9999 each round is probably not enough...</span></div>
