Recently i finished my first playthrough, and now is time for my to share some thoughts about the game and especially the characters whopee.
1-Story
The story itself felt good but also kinda convolute in a way, the big lore dump at the near end of the game also felt like well...a big lore dump, it realy feels like the game was trying to make itself more complex than needed cause being simple was not "good enough", overall i liked the story but it realy felt like it had a cliff at the end, there was also WAY too many characters on world 2, after seeing the credits it made sense since apparently people submitted secret characters and etc, but i still think it could have done with less characters especially since some of them felt like they existed and didn't contribute a lot to the story or this world in general.
2-Difficulty
Difficulty was perfect, and unironically was too easy for me, not because the game is easy but because i'm a fucking farming ass head, that grinded a shit ton of levels and shards, surprising still had some toughs spots despite the farming (that specific fight with spamming stun/stop can particulary go fuck itself, and BOY omega was rough).
3-Music
Music was good like genuinely amazing, probably the worst crime this game does is not having proper loops for some songs or said songs being perhaps too short, the ending scene with the final fantasy motif on the song was good but too short for example, overall i still had a blast with the music even i know most of it was ripped or based on existing final fantasy songs.
4-Performance
Probably the worst crime this game does is the performance, my laptop is not that insane (4 gb ram in 2026 oof). but i still could play the game fine for the most part, my main complaints come from the battle transitions that felt a bit laggy, and the overworld in merged worlds was MASSIVELY LAGGY JESUS CHRIST, using black chocobo just made it even more laggy, unironically i would have taken a modified story to not have the black voids in merged worlds if that meant the performance not being fucking shit (well at least i assume the lag comes from that).
5-Balancing
Now for balancing, the legendary weapons are kinda fucking ass? most of the time i got a weapon i had another better weapon instead, this is also particulary terrible considering you have limited choices on the ones you can get (which the game should really warn you, considering ff5 just let you have all of them), despite me farming for shards to make characters massively strong i unironically think it was a mistake to have the shards imo, having shards just make the player want to farm them but then the game also make the shards either super hard to farm or not worth it, which you question why they are even here, especially if are meant to use the characters for their own strengths, some characters also obviously ended up stronger or weaker than others but i will leave more of that to the characters section.
6-Characters
I started this game with trying to try out all characters that i could, then at some point i mostly gave up on it and focused on using specific characters that i liked so let's begin shall we?
Vahn-i will real i ignored vahn for most of the game he felt very basic and boring, with that said i tried him from time to time, overall i would say he is a pretty decent character especially after he learns healing moves, he unironically becomes a somewhat competent healer if you not want to use megaelixirs or elina.
Darius-Boy, i REALLY want to love darius dark knights are among my favorite jobs in final fantasy but god he is just...mediocre? his dps is just average, and you require him to use a bunch of debuffs to do what other dps users can do by just existing, it also not help his debuffs have a terrible duration, it feels like the developer played way too safe with him which removed his fun in return.
Vera-Vera is funny in a sense, she start the game by being one of the most op characters in terms of dps, but late game you bring vera mostly for the general utility instead of just the dps, for example oalston ultima is nearly on the same level as bahamut but bahamut can't be used every turn, i honestly wonder why he didn't pull a blackmoon prophecy 2, and have vera get a super mega powerful summon without cd at the moon or something, over all though she is genuinely a solid character especially if you didn't level grind like me you will definetly enjoy her having both a shell and protect summons so your party don't die in secs her healing summons are also pretty neat and etc, again vera start as a dps user but she becomes a general good utility character later.
Ami-OK so, i have no idea if builded my ami wrong but boy, she is painfully mediocre, her dps is for the most part average, it costs way too much mp for most of the game, and just by virtue of blue mage being blue mage it don't help you have to find how to even get her spells in the first place, ami suffer the blue mage curse of having interesting niches with specific things but not really being solid enough to play a specific role, well at least in my opinion (like most if not all of this list), she start somewhat decent having a strong-ish aoe move but she really fall off as the game goes on, i can't stop but think this was done on purpose to make Ami feel more "quirky" cause there is no way the final fantasy series have 0 powerful/meaningful spells Ami couldn't use like quasar for example (guaranteed animating quasar would be ass so i don't blame the dev too much, but you get my point).
Nobumasa- He felt alright for me, nothing shit but nothing insane either, his downside is the obvious main dps being reliant on a self-buff when other dps users can just aim for the kill, a similar but much less worse issue akin to darius, unironically a petty complaint i had for the entire game was "why is there only shurikens? what about fuma shuikens? is there really no other type of shuriken?" overall if i was ranking those characters akin to a tier list i would put nobumasa between B and C i think.
Siegfriend-Siegfriend instead somewhat mediocre, with his dps moves being ok but because of shit ass mp pool you can barely use them, and then end game he is hitting 9k x 4 against enemies like the chad he is, definetly a character that made me go "meh" then endgame gave a shot with them again and was like "Holy fuck" not gameplay related, but siegfried also suffered what i stated early in the convo section, of his lore being in massive lore dump that happens instead of having a build up to it over the course of the game, also his encounter with gilgamesh on the tomb i forgot the name was also kinda meh.
Laka-Ok, so laka is uuh hard to judge, mostly because her main gimmick is bugged, ok so you see each enemy is KEYWORD "meant" but due to a bug her steal rate is 100% which make her insane to bring cause this game has some insane ass fucking loot, remember when i talked about megaelixirs in the vahn section? yeah she can steal megaelixirs in world 2, as you can imagine that shit is fucking broken when you are guaranteed to always 100% hit the steals, a lot of bosses also get unique powerful steals, for example laka is the only method you can use to have 2 economizers instead of one, because of the insane ass steals either due to pure good items or selling their equipments for good money laka is insanely good to bring, in fact i used her literally the entire game cause i was afraid of losing the good shit (and i was right imo), sadly she not has a lot of use besides stealing, she get hastega which guaranteed is one of the best moves in the game, but also her dps scale TERRIBLE later in the game, so after you steal and use her hastega, she just kinda exist, at least util you farm a shit ton of megaelixirs with her steal and turn her into a healer by using mega elixirs every turn (Yes i did that).
Oalston-If you want dps this is your guy, oalston has good dps from the start of the game all the way to the end, in fact oalstoe in the endgame is dealing 10000 damage x 5 against 1 enemy for around 50k damage, being the character with the biggest damage per turn that not relies on crits, also using ultima for around 25k damage to all enemies, wait i know what you may be thinking "but flandre, the game only let oalston pick either meteo or ultima for oalstone you can't have both" well remember that i said i level grinded? yeah turns out this developer is a giga chad, and made it so oalston can learn ultima & meteo at lv 99, which made oalston a monster to bring on literally any fight at the endgame, single target? use meteo, multiple enemies? ultima is the way, HE IS YOUR GUY FOR DPS DID I SAY THAT YET?
Elina-Elina is well weird, she start the game as being very powerful with dia and being good a healer whenever it's needed, but as the game goes on you get alternative healers so her healing end up being not entirely needed, her buffs are actually kinda a terrible idea to use and this is due to all of them mostly being single target, and your white mage not healing can be a death depending on the turn, her holy also start being powerful but falls off really hard in the end game she is still a insane healer she just lose SOME value due to you having alternate characters that can also heal, regardless i believe she still stands as one of the best characters, and is one of the few characters that can remove ailments from multiple party members, in fact i was losing to omega despite level grinding and she allowed me to win against him (guaranteed that was before i found how to farm megaelixirs with laka but sssh).
Boshe-Ok so boshe in the original game had this kinda senile old-man behaviour and that had carried over to the second game (guaranteed it's been over 8 years since i played the original game so i'm maybe confusing plotlines here), in this game for some reason he is this fanatic relic hunter which is just very very bland, is also awfully weird why the developer decided to change his character to this considering laka is right there to be the other "character that is obsessed with x valuable thing", his gameplay is also terrible he has mediocre stats and his stat growth not make up for it, his procure ability is also just a worse version of gaia from FFV, you thought gaia in ffv having bad dps options was terrible? what about having rng randomly DAMAGE your party, yeah very funny developer, what i also hate about boshe stats is that he unironically has the best critical hit rate potential in the endgame, being able to have a whopping 70-90 critical hit rate with the right build, literally if boshe had the vigor for it, he would be a damage monster but alas, the sidequest to get all of his procure relics is also not really worth honestly, and not helps the game not even give you a counter or something of all relics you got.
Godot-godot main issue pretty much stands from being a red mage, aka he is not a insane healer, and not a insane dps user, later game you get a orb from a chest that give him ultima that is technically a insane option to have, but then you remember he has less options to build magic compared to oalston and you start to realize that yeah godot is decent but he is not oalston, overall still a decent character though (omg i been typing for 1 hour why does this game have so many characters).
Moguel-honestly this character just feel like it exist to justify the golden apples existing (the item that increase all stats except mp/hp), due to the nature of his moves you want to build him to have multiple good stats, but the game not give you the equipments to have multiple good stats that are worth using in the end game for mega builds, so you end up losing potential on him regardless of how you build him, because of that i actually ignored him for basically almost the entire game, also didn't help that he's one of the characters that barely has lore so you are given even less of a reason to care about him.
Barbariccia-Unironically solid, she has a lot of meaningful dps options and even get a nice healing on white wind, her main issue is the lack of options you are given to build her, pretty sure there is only like for example 2-3 whips in the entire game iirc? overall a good character just should have had more options to build with her, likely a side effect from being introduced so later in the game, but hey i'm not complaining and she is hot as always so a plus for me, and unlike moguel she actually has some good lore tied to her at least.
Lyric-used mostly for money for the game (sadly only recruited her on world 2 cause i didn't knew of her in world 1) despite being mostly a grind resources character, she unironically thanks to wild gambit (later game relic) she hits 1 enemy for 24-28k damage each turn for only like 4 mp, making her a more solid dps option at that point than other dps users like darius (understand now why i said i'm sad with him?), so to put it simple has mediocre dps but good resources grind then gets insane dps after a certain point in the game, nice character overall.
Cid-As expected from anything somewhat edgar adjacent he is pretty decent, his major issue is similar to vera where he can't mostly focus on one role well due to cd, overall still a good character especially when he is not resource depent.
Brindle-Can't relate, i had him as a blacksmith instead of character.
Oliver-I will be honest i didn't bother with oliver, his mp seemed shit, and his omen while powerful i didn't like that it had a small chance of falling, and it suffers the gaia issue of not being consistent dps wise.
Ovelia-while i touched oliver a bit (mostly to grind some specific shit) i REALLY didn't touch olivia so i have 0 thoughts of her.
Malacore-due to being late in the game he has the issue of needing some grind to levels, while i gave him some levels i also gave him some shards, and let me just say he was hitting Hard ok so malacore has this skill of having specific skills based on the weapon he has equipped, with the ultima weapon he not only get to cast ultima, he also get apocalypse which scales with vigor and magic, and i'm pretty sure it scale by putting his vigor and magic together cause let me just say with him having around 1000 magic and around 1700 vigor he was hitting really fucking hard, my final team was legit malacore, laka, oalston and vera, he was hitting hard enough to justify being on the team.
No lord adder since i couldn't recruit him due to branch time travel bug, and well this is it folks all my general thoughts of the game and characters after my first playthrough, jeez wholie, i will likely play it again (perhaps with less grinding) to both avoid the branch time travel bug to get the stuff i missed, and to test other characters i didn't play a lot/at all like ovelia.
Welp this is it, said all i wanted to say for the most part.
