I don't hate Vaan, but I don't care for him. I'm glad his character is at least evolving.
I'm a sucker for payback stories, so Basch's plotline is very exciting to me. Very Count of Monte Cristo-esque.
And yeah, Balthier is really hard to pin on the Good/Evil scale. But he really comes out like Han. A dick, but he doesn't care that he gets tied up in other people's problems. Maybe this changes later.
Who did the art direction for this game? I love the costumes and general theme. Part of the reason I like Basch is simply how fucking cool he looks. Balthier's pants
Fran's boobies
The music is also excellent, very Disney-ish in Rabanastre, which works in tandem with Vaan being like a sad rip-off of Aladdin.
EDIT: I have so much to say about this game I keep forgetting: I really love the battle system. I started with Wait, but once you know how to hunt through the menus, I moved up to Active and it's really smooth. I still wish it was a little more like KOTOR in that you can queue up multiple commands and pause whenever you want instead of going into the config menu, but still, it's really good.
About the bosses; I almost got wiped so hard against the Mimic Queen. I was owning her until she popped out that mega-move and everyone but Fran died. Thankfully I had some PDs, so I got Balthier and Vaan back up and we took her out pretty quick.
And yes, this is my first time. I had like one thing spoiled for me reading this thread, but I'm not sure I remember it, and I'm not gonna dig it up
Oh and one more thing (I think I've edited this post 10 times), Hunts are tricky as fuck. I keep thinking I'm leveled enough to take them on as they come up, but I get rocked so hard.
Also, I like the LB a lot more than the Sphere Grid at this point because you don't even have to think about it. All of the battle gameplay is super-streamlined. You only really need to go into the LB when you're in town or you find a piece of equipment you want to use. I really like this a lot.
