Halfway through Chapter 3 (fought the first boss in it); using the CE guide the whole time. I lost two times at that boss because I missed a +HP item earlier, so I had to backtrack for it.
Impressions so far: Everything is beautiful, battle system is a little dull early on but it's getting better, VAs are good except for Vanille, Hope is angsty but I'm relatively tolerant for angsty characters and he has some good reasons, I need to use subtitles because I couldn't always hear what people were saying, and Snow and Sazh are much cooler than expected.
To expand on that, Sazh isn't really... well, stereotyped. Well, he is a little, but to the extent that he would be in a US movie... maybe less so, even.
Overall, I'm enjoying it a lot. I don't know if I would be if I had played any other main FF game before this- I came in with no real expectations as to gameplay, and I think that helped.
EDIT 3/31: Got ~1/2 through Chapter 4, saved right after boss battle.
The combat is finally coming together, with Paradigm Shifting happening a lot. Apparently you get to use the first summon at the end of this chapter, so I'm looking forward to that.
Impressions so far: Everything is beautiful, battle system is a little dull early on but it's getting better, VAs are good except for Vanille, Hope is angsty but I'm relatively tolerant for angsty characters and he has some good reasons, I need to use subtitles because I couldn't always hear what people were saying, and Snow and Sazh are much cooler than expected.
To expand on that, Sazh isn't really... well, stereotyped. Well, he is a little, but to the extent that he would be in a US movie... maybe less so, even.
Overall, I'm enjoying it a lot. I don't know if I would be if I had played any other main FF game before this- I came in with no real expectations as to gameplay, and I think that helped.
EDIT 3/31: Got ~1/2 through Chapter 4, saved right after boss battle.
The combat is finally coming together, with Paradigm Shifting happening a lot. Apparently you get to use the first summon at the end of this chapter, so I'm looking forward to that.