This is the first BoF game I've played. Took me about 53 hrs (almost 2 of which were on the final boss -- good thing it only took me one try) without a walkthrough. I got both (I think there are only 2) endings.
The thing I liked the most about this game is that on the world map, you can choose whether or not to enter areas where you will find one item and get into random encounters. This is one of the best features I've ever come across in an RPG. Never mind that there are only 3 or 4 different map layouts for these areas and the item is always in one of 4 or 5 set locations (actually, that's probably a good thing since you quickly learn where to look for the item and don't end up wandering around for a long time).
The other thing I really like about this game is how it handles battles when you have more than 3 characters in your party. Instead of having them lingering around somewhere outside of battle, you bring your entire party (up to 6) into battle and can swap them out at any time between rounds. This probably makes the game quite a bit easier, though.
Other than those two things, nothing really makes this game stand out in a positive way.
I despise the 45 degree map rotation. The mini-games got tedious after a while (I know Japan is an island country and fishing games are really popular there, but I still really hate whenever a fishing mini-game makes an appearance (at least it was completely optional since I don't think you actually have to accomplish anything fishing-wise during the story event that has you go fishing)). The Combos seem like a cool thing, but other than getting the requirements for the two Masters that are based on Combos, I never purposely tried to get them since they really weren't that beneficial. The Masters are almost pointless. The Skill Learning system is annoying. The Dragon animations are extremely long, including the amount of time you have to wait before getting the option to skip them.
I think the Fou-Lu aspect has become my most disliked feature of all time, or at least it ranks up there. Once I realized that it most likely had zero effect of the game, it became apparent to me that it seemed like the programmers wanted to make it FMV sequences, found out people didn't like a lot of FMVs, and turned them into a playable segments. So you end up wandering around with the appearance of what you are doing actually mattering, when it turns out it doesn't.
All in all, it's a decent game, but not one I would recommend. I wouldn't recommend staying away from it, either.
