'Halfway' is just a guess on my part, I'm at Fisherman's Horizon right now. This game is pretty weird; I'm pretty split right now between loving it and hating it!
+ I actually really like the Draw/Junction system in concept. Not having to worry about MP is really nice, and drawing 100 of each spell, like people led me to believe before I started, is mostly unnecessary as long as you learn Refine abilities.
+ Getting paid a salary instead of finding cash on monsters is one of those quirky little ideas that I love to see in games.
+ When Squall is at his best, I see a lot of potential in him to be a great character. In particular, I like what the game is doing with him during the missile strike and at FH.
+ Rinoa is not bad. I like her design.
+ Irvine is literally dressed like a cowboy.
- Irvine is literally dressed like a cowboy.
- Selphie is a bunch of half-baked, annoying character quirks rolled into a person, Zell is mostly inoffensive but has a horrid design. Quistis is 'there'.
- For large chunks of the game it seems like the writers remembered to make Squall brooding but forgot to give him any reason to do so, or any kind of characterization at all.
- The Draw/Junction system, in reality, is completely imbalanced. Not to say it isn't fun, but I had no prior knowledge of it beforehand and even I figured out 'refine Tents into Curaga, junction to HP' pretty quickly!
- Weapon upgrade system is horrid.
- Everything feels so slow. The first chunk of the game is all about SeeD and the Sorceress, which remain kind of vague concepts that I didn't really care anything about until much later. I'm 4 hours into the second disc,I've barely even seen the world map, and the number of locations I've been to feels pitifully small. The game seems to really love making you spend way too much time in the same area; a great example is the prison escape, where you have to run to the top floor, then to the top floor AGAIN, then to the bottom floor. Or the attack on Balamb Garden, where you have to search the entire first floor and fight early-game enemies the whole before the plot will advance.
I know this is one of the most opinion-splitting FFs but I've never been able to participate in the discussion before; what are your thoughts, B8?
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What is this, some kind of joke?!
Go, then. There are other worlds than these.