Well, although I agree with Black Mage a lot on this, I don't actually think it was a HORRIBLE RPG. S'okay for what it was, or, tried to be.

I agree, the dialogue sucked. I agree, the characters were unlikable: Dart was whiny, Meru was Aeris-annoying, Rose was a bitch, Albert's a rich kid who replaces some guy I can't remember, and . . . I can't even remember the others.

The voice-acting was a nice surprise. Unfortunately, they forgot vocal-coaches.

Dart and Rose looked the coolest. I'd have to say that Dart, Rose, and Albert had the best attacks.

The story was far from perfect and the plot was painfully slow.

The combo system was cool, as were most of the attacks (Dragoon powers included). Some of the spells were lame-looking and did little damage though you'd receive them at points in the game when you required more power.

I kinda liked how most battles ended with Dart somehow finishing off the bosses. It seemed slightly like a show.

This is the game I spent 45 minutes in destroying the final boss. On other threads, I claimed it was eight hours, but I was exaggerating to emphasize a point. In my opinion, no boss should be so difficult you spend 45 minutes defeating them. I was kinda hyped having to use every item in stock and every opportunity at transforming. It did manage to make the final battles in FF7 look like chump battles.

Personally, I have no problems with the cliches. Every RPG is cliched. No matter the title, an RPG can only manage a few unique innovations and everything else is a cliche. Actually, sometimes these "cliches" are just things that have been done once or twice before and because a gamer has seen it done and it is not totally original, they label it as a cliche. I've seen this a few times, not many mind you as most gamers are fluent enough gamewise to know the difference.

The whole thing though was just too long and there were points when it was more than a little dissinteresting.