Finished Raithwall's Tomb and obtained the Dawn Shard, heading to the Garif Village but stopping to do some Mark Hunts and quests first.

Pros:
  • Okay the second Zodiac Job element is a bit more balanced than I thought it would be, which I am grateful for. So basically any Licenses your two boards share are already grabbed when you jump to the second board, this means that unless the first job was seriously light on Lore skills or didn't have the ability at all, you're not going to be doubling up and transforming your party into a one-man army with lores. This alleviates my fear of the second board breaking the game.
  • I received my first Esper, but I don't know who to give it to, I may have to do some research first.
  • Unlocked my first Elite Mark Hunt that has a Clan member come to help me. Giza Rains will be fun.
  • Of my starting classes, the MVP award goes to Red Battlemage, Time Battlemage, and Knight.
  • I almost forgot how useful and broken the Blood Sword is. Not surprised it's relegated to it's own License like a few other legendary weapons.
  • Belias put up a bit more of fight than I thought he would which was nice.
  • Rereading some of the lore, it's been amusing seeing all the shout outs to previous FF and Ivalice titles.


Cons:
  • Yeah, the difficulty was definitely toned way down for this game. I killed the Garuda Egi before I even had a chance to use the Esker Berries on it. I mean the fight was so fast I was stunned, but not as bad as...
  • ...the true testament of how easy this game has gotten, I beat the First Demon Wall, the one you're suppose to run away from, on my first try. Easily took him down to half health and beat him with a Quickening Chain afterwards. Thankfully the Demonsbane is no longer the prize for beating him, and it's something a bit less useful, but it's kind of sad watching one the nastier challenges go down so easily. My party level average is 22-23 and it's not like I was seriously grinding or anything either.
  • With that said, I'm probably going to resist using Quickening from here on out. The fact it has its own meter and no longer has the difficult choice of gambling all your MP away makes them easily into a gamebreaker. I kind of wish this element had not been changed for them and the meter was exclusive to the Espers instead.
  • Not terribly content with my choices for each character's second class but we'll have to wait and see. Penelo is a bit screwed in the equipment/lore area of things, but the other party members are a bit more balanced, though I don't know how well some of the classes are going to compliment each other.