I was going to comment on some minor problems and such, justifying a -0.5 star deduction... then I thought...
Seriously, you couldn't even BUY games this good when I was a kid, and now they're FREE and play in a browser. Man what kind of whiner would that make me.
5 STARS!
voice acting is terrible and the gameplay is incredibly boring, not a bad idea but the game lacks any entertainment
It's actually an amazing game, seriously. Great gameplay, love the anime style art. But there is a little detail: after a while it gets really slow and I mean it just stops mid-game and it's imposible to keep playing or it will load the mission for an hour and then give you a black screen. It's really frustrating specially since I'm actually enjoying the rest of the game a lot. So please check that out.
intertaining, but some improvements and fixing wouldent hurt.
The bad news first.
Fight with the chancellor is absolutely absurd, even *if* you know that clicking multiple times on a spot will get your whole party to flee Hector's area of effect attacks- I still died at least 5 times because my party insisted on approaching the red circle of death nonetheless, or because they took several seconds to respond to the order to flee. It was a horrible decision to require micromanagement in a combat system that doesn't allow *any*. I finally killed that asshole after sending in a lone gunner and getting him stuck behind a wall, then shooting him to death (took a surprisingly short time, too). But really, when you have to win through a glitch, then just... no.
In addition, gombat balance is generally an issue. A well-equipped, level 15+ party can tear through most enemies in seconds.... unless the enemies happen to be drakes or undead, in which case, you're the one going to die in seconds. Very extreme increase in enemy power. Movement is awkward at best- characters get stuck too easily and the auto-attack is wayyy too aggressive, which often means charging into a huge mob of enemies and dying as a result. Scholarsages' ultimate "meteor" ability is extremely awkward- it only works within melee range and all mages are squishy as hell, so trying to get within range to use it might result in a painful death. Medicas' normal ability "first aid", while quite powerful if you stand and fight, insists on making them hold still to heal every 5 seconds or so, so Medicas are the first to get caught and killed if you flee instead. Which sucks.
Also, Jeanne is hilariously bad at estimating your chances when she gives "advice". She will advise caution if and ONLY if, you are horribly, horribly underleveled, but other than that, I always hear "this shouldn't be a problem" from her, even when I get ripped to pieces 30 seconds later. Bah.
Lots of bugs. I found that the loading screen during hunt missions would hang, and periodically crash the game. Music was prone to turning itself off at random. 1% of the time, promoting a student would crash the game. I understand that some of these problems may be unique to me, or just rare, but it was still extremely annoying. Fortunately, the rest of the game did not lag.
Voice acting and character sprites were both plain and repetitive. At least you tried, and I got used to it after a while.
Alright, bitching over, the good points. Most of the aesthetics are a strong point- absolutely gorgeous backgrounds and buildings. But the effort is appreciated. Music was great. The non-combat aspects- management, construction and errands are simple, engaging and easy to pick up. Storyline, especially the paladin initiation, was amusing, and you got a laugh out of me from the insane "I must be the sparkliest man" hunt mission, among others. The main NPCs (Jeanne, Helen, Kayla, Eve, Lawrence etc) were fairly developed, I liked them, although it would be nice if there was a way to interact with/use them outside of quests.
I give it a 7 out of 10. It's a good game, and clearly a lot of effort found its way into this game but a lot of unfortunate flaws keep it from being amazing.