First off, I just want to say that I spent probably over 1000 hours playing FFTA and it was hands down the best RPG I have ever played (across any console).
Secondly, I want to agree about the story line missions. They are rather unfocused and dull, but at the same time, if you complete side missions as they come up, instead of just barreling through the story missions, you actually can complete a good portion of them before you reach the end of the game. I was at about 250 missions completed when I did the final story mission. It detracted from the main story a bit and actually made the story seem more complete.
It actually felt more like a game this time around, even though I love FFTA still.
Now, onto the things I am unhappy about.
- The MP is terrible. The one thing I truly hated about it was the fact that you never EVER get to a point where you can use your powerful magic abilities. Add to that the fact that No Mou are the slowest, and it makes it so you can't use stuff on demand. My starting No Mou ended up mastering both white and black magic, and I only ever use the black magic on easy fights. Otherwise I spend turn after turn healing and rezzing people.
- The laws are irrelevant. Almost every scenario where there is a law, you can easily avoid breaking it, and even if you do break it, there is no real consequence. Your characters can't die in this one, and that was a disappointment. Made no sense to follow laws unless they were part of completing the mission.
- On the brightmoon towers, the monsters are too powerful. They often get multiple turns each before your characters even get one. By the time you get to the 2nd tower, your characters aren't even close to lvl 99, and they are all just about dead before you even get a turn. Not to mention the monsters completely drain any MP you had saved from the previous rounds.
- Moogles are the worst race in the game. Between FFTA and FFTA2 I am at odds with what to use them for. I ultimately settle on going through time mage and black mage, but it just didn't feel right this time around, especially since they get no supporting abilities. I would rather have them improve moogles than added seeq and gria (which I didn't even bother with.)
- The bazaar system was somewhat of an improvement, but you should have been able to see what each one gives and what it costs before you plug in your loot. A lot of the good weapons and armor took a long time to get. On the plus side, it did make getting certain things way easier once you got to a certain point.
- The thief class was just destroyed this time around, same with the alchemist. The time mage abilities were nerfed considerably. Instead of having area buffs/debuffs, most of them were made single target only. I also miss my old dragoon/time mage combo of mirror mail and quicken.
- Debuff abilities were normalized so that no matter where you stand they have the same chance of hitting. I did not like this. I prefer having an increased chance of hitting from behind. Most of the debuff abilities have too low of a hit percentage.
- Defender class abilities didn't used to have a MP cost, now they do. This was a crappy change for those of us who used aura/meltdown on monsters. Especially since meltdown only has a 50% chance to hit now.
I better stop now, I could go on forever. For the most part, all these things were minor annoyances, and I hope they come out with another one.
This will keep me occupied until Golden Sun comes out for DS.
