Unless the second chapter really mixes things up, I think this game is done. There's a good idea at the core, and it's not even terribly executed, but the little non-game-breaking problems add up, and add up quickly.
1) You have a lot of monster powers, but they are inadequately listed in any useful way. And I am far enough to say that yes, the game does require you to switch them quite a bit.
2) The core gameplay, despite the frequent switching, doesn't have a whole lot of variety. You are basically equipping and switching different variations of Melee Attack With Element X. There's not a lot of variety in powers, so it makes them all. . .unmemorable, so you are flipping through monster after monster trying to remember whether it was this monster or this similar looking monstar that had the attack that did well against this monster you are fighting now.
3) I'm not quite sure if I can blame the game, but I am getting suspicious: these controller issues are aggravating.
4) The game's not particularly a looker. It has some good monster designs, and there are some decidedly next gen effects dumped on top, but this looks PS2HD. And there are hitches all over the place, not just when switching monsters. Environments are not very exciting looking, and they are not very big, but you get treated to frequent load times. Areas look too similar, too.
The straw breaking my back?
5) The story is basically incoherent. This is one of the worst loc jobs I have seen in recent memory. It seems like they put all their loc effort into having the main character try to come up with some witty retort (that usually comes up dry and lame) and then they just shipped in the uberrough first draft of the translated game and story script. I, literally, have no fucking clue what is going on. I can't begin to explain how characters are connected or what. No exaggeration. I can't remember the last time I encountered a localization that actually left me totally clueless. I know this wasn't the highest priority game in the world, but it's not like Sony's localization people have anything fucking better to do. This is an embarassment. This is like, SNES ENIX translation bad.
This had better get better really quickly, or else it will bear the shameful designation of first game I have traded back in several months. To note, I haven't even traded Lair back in.
