Just finished the Chapter 9 and I'm deep into Chapter 10. The game has truly reached the stage where I feel like I'm playing Xenosaga Episode 2. Not only cause of the similarity in design but because dungeons are seriously un-fulfilling. Good god did the Palamecia dungeon drag on forever and it wasn't even cause I got lost, it just takes forever to walk from point A to point B.

Story wise, it was nice to get everyone back together though the reunion scene of the party is a little weird with the whole "catch the flying monstrosity Pulse style" it was more funny for its absurdness than anything. (SPOILER)I'm completely disappointed that Jihl was taken out so quickly, she's barely introduced and then gets killed a chapter later. Once again I feel the Datalog gives her more justice as a villain than her screen time.

(SPOILER)The big revelation at the end of the chapter was sadly, very disappointing and completely predictable to a certain extent. I didn't think Dysley was fal'Cie but I pretty much assumed he was l'Cie. I don't want it spoiled for me but I wouldn't be surprised if the Cocoon fal'Cie were basically rebel fal'Cie that the Gran Pulse fal'Cie are trying to stop from taking over the world or some other equally absurd RPG stereotype goal, hence the reason why Pulse l'Cie always seemed tasked with destroying Cocoon.

The last boss of Chapter 9 was a bitch though... Two times I came close to beating the SOB but got stopped both times thanks to his stupid Doom spell. Whoever came up with the idea of stealing MegaTen's idea of auto-game over when the main controlled character is dead should be shot. We should also shoot the guy who decided that restarting should happen at select auto-save locations instead of just letting the player choose to start at the last save or just restart from the battle when its a boss battle. Having to watch (or manually skip) the same damn cutscene before a boss fight is annoying.

Anyway... I finally got past the guy by finally seriously taking part of one of the system's I've been ignoring up to this point, the Weapon Upgrade system. Making all their weapons level 10 pretty much allowed me to kill him faster so I didn't have to worry about Doom.

I'm hoping we'll finally get to explore the fal'Cie cause up until this point they are like the games McGuffin (SPOILER)and its amusing that your party figures out they are evil before they even reveal they are evil...

I'm in the bizarre Chapter 10 which already fells like a filler arc meant to reconcile the poor pacing of the gameplay and story.(SPOILER) I also still want to punch Vanille in the face for causing all the games problems.

:EDITGA:
Finished Chapter 10 and I'm pretty disappointed. (SPOILER)Getting rid of Cid felt more like a cop out and them trying to figure out what to do with him than a serious effort. I'm still kinda waiting for a real plot to start and frankly, the fal'Cie are not exactly a great antagonist considering you only ever talk to one of them. Really, this chapter felt tacked on and was kind of a boring drudge after the more exciting Chapter 7-9. I feel like the writers really went out of their way to poorly utilize all their antagonist and write a strong plot. The individual character pieces are nice but I've clocked in nearly 30 hours and feel like I've accomplished nothing. Hell, I feel like my party has returned to their situation at the start of Chapter 3 tbh, with them figuring out what to do about their Focus and Cocoon.

Moving onto Chapter 11 and hoping for something a little more exciting and substantial in terms of plot. Also, LOL to Hope and Snow for making silly melodramatic speeches that seriously don't fit the scenes.