I spoke too soon. Ugh, I forgot Chapter 12 is, like all the other chapters, unnecessarily long. I still haven't even reached the final boss fight for this chapter, but dear god, I spent a whole evening just wasting time through this Xenosaga wannabe scenario. Once again, the other members of NORA reappeared, and once again, I had completely forgotten about them.

I also discovered, to my horror, that unlocking the tertiary roles for characters is an absolutely smurfing bad idea. Whenever the game tries to build you paradigm sets, it always chooses the worst options. Like having Fang be a medic, Lightning a Synergist, and Hope a Sentinel. These are all their worst roles. I restarted the first fight in this chapter simply because it threw a weird party combo at me, and then proceeded to give me the trouttiest paradigm selection I could ask for.

So this is turning into a much slower process than I would care for, and it's really starting to eat into my desire to bother with the sequels.