I disliked abilities in FFT because it was nothing but "grind". In FFTA2, you don't get access to everything at the beginning. In some ways, this is annoying, because the best jobs for stat training are locked until later in the game (stupid Parivirs). But in other ways, it is much more fun for me. Rather than spending three hours at the start of the game mindlessly performing the same actions over and over again (Chakra spam, anyone?) to gain JP, I get to fight the battles as battles, and I get AP afterward. You can't unlock all the abilities right away, so you get some customization to pick and choose where to focus your strengths. You get enough freedom that you can unlock whatever ability you choose, but you can't just unlock them all immediately. It allows greater customization, prevents super characters early on, and discourages mindless grinding.

I mean, as long as all the abilities are availible at the beginning, why didn't they just give us all the abilities and skip the mindless farm fest?

I'm not expressing myself very well on this point, unfortunately, and, even worse, I'm drifting away from focusing on the positive aspects and how the games would relate to the next in the series, so let's get back to the topic.


Secret Characters: This point applies to all of the games, so I'll go over them all. The special characters are great. Unique jobs, unique sprites, great personalities, and fun missions to unlock them. But they aren't perfect.

First, limited story after they join you. With these awesome characters, it's a shame that they never show up in any of the plot scenes after the join you. For some of them, they join so late that it doesn't matter, but I would like to see at least small appearances in the stories after they join up. Take Frimelda. When your clan is sitting around the cities after the missions, she should be there if you have her, and get a couple lines. Same thing with Ezel in FFTA (others aren't availible until after you beat the game in that one).

Second, let them join at low levels. You usually don't get these guys until late in the game, and picking them up at too high a level to stat train means that they tend to be weaker than the rest of your team.