Recent reviews by Paspale

I hope neither Aster House memories nor Star Door 15 will get censored for blood or content when 3rd remake is released.

Excellent story with a mix of Felghana and VIII story elements.
I personally feel that this entry has better balance of enemy stats compared to Celceta and 8. The later entries have given sky-high str (as well as HP) to elite monsters and bosses that player def feels largely irrelevant and half of the HP bar can disappear upon taking one hit (and in the highest difficulties of 8 and Celceta it is extremely common to be 1HKOed). The combat of 7 feels closer to the acclaimed 6FO three weapons system and the player only takes moderate damage from all incoming attacks, and the overwhelming majority of attacks can be dodged without guarding. I never used flash guard due to personal preference of dodging over blocking. Charged attack mechanic also prevents skill-spam that makes Celceta and 8 combats feel monotonous (with a low cost skill of short animation it is possible to infinite-chain skills in Celceta and 8 on normal difficulty).
The dungeon puzzles are great (I really enjoyed both wind dungeons, both ocean dungeons, the final dungeon, and the earth sanctum) but the open areas are quite boring and made worse with the forced backtracking in the middle of the game.
There are no quest markers or quest boards in the game. There is no way to know who gives a quest without talking to every NPCs after every main story events. Half of the quests expires upon setting sail for Ruins Island but there is NO indications anywhere to hint this. I would advice ignoring the quests completely (other than the titano hunts and the holy flame delivery) to save the hassle since they have mostly no effect on the story.

Adol routinely leaves girls behind once they have fallen for him.

Excellent story, Excellent characterisation, Excellent music, Excellent art style. Good combat.

I wouldn't be surprised if the the entire comment section is lamenting the separation of Dana with Ado and co. but I would genuinely consider Laxia to be the most suitable and regrettable lady for Adol. She had a lot of character growth thanks to Adol as she starts as a helpless yet fixated ex-noble girl trying to shield her fragile self with a misandristic facade and tsundere attitude, and blames her uncertainties in life on her father to escape her past. As she gets more interactions with Adol and the other castaways she acknowledges that her noble past means nothing in the present and begins to doubt her way of life and coping mechanism. She questions how she can become useful to the village as other skilled ladies i.e. Alison and Kathleen join the villages and eventually confesses to Adol about her past to make herself comfortable to face those events and the question of who she actually is. Eventually she acknowledges that it is also an innate part of her to have admired her father and his work as an archaeologist as well as her aspiration of using her knowledge for the good and becoming a scholar of archaeology to trace her father's footsteps. Finally she also manages to be an essential intellectual support in Adol's attempt to stop the Lacrimosa and firmly asserts her own wish to live in her own way with Adol and co. against the Wardens' arguments. In the epilogue she vows to Adol for them to meet again when they have successfully made their breakthroughs as an archaeologist and an adventurer respectively. Unlike the other human girls e.g. Lilia, Elena, Leeza, she has gained the spirit of an adventurer through the events of the game and has a passion and profession specifically in making useful discoveries, similar to Adol, as well as the will to travel and learn more about the world because it is a fundamental part of her work, even though the motive is different from the explorers e.g. Thanatos and Ricotta, to be able to embark on an endless journey with Adol occasionally or permanently.

I like how Yunica and Hugo both have a violent curse battle with Zava.

Nell?!?! WHY?????
Chester!!!! NO——!!!!!
Such a captivating tragic story with twists and turns, and the perfect execution of an epilogue (unlike a certain memory title)

Good game overall with excellent story (for 99% of the playtime) and vivid characters. Battle system is mostly fluent as well although I never used guard for the entirety of the game (I used dodge only). Exploration is cool and intriguing and the environment and music add perfectly to game-play immersion.

Nevertheless, let's get to the frustrating parts that I have encountered.

First, the video of the game freezes often (like around once per hour) while the game is running on my device. The audio, game mechanics and UI are still working while the video freezes so I can save the actual game state with the right sequence of keys). The only method to fix the video is to close the game window and restart the game. This is very likely not a performance issue of my device as my fans are not roaring and the temperature is not fuming, and the freezing and crashing occur no matter how high or low I set my game performance settings to be.

There are also a number of softlocking bugs that I have encountered.
One is on the sprinting section on the Tower of Prominence. Reaching certain areas of the map resulting in the character in control being stopped by an invisible wall and unable to move in front or sideways while the sprinting animation plays. Releasing the sprint key causes the sliding down animation to play but the character is stuck in place. This can only be solved by reloading a save.
The other is at the golden section of Iris. Upon exiting one of the portals after finishing the monsters inside, one of the characters of the party is visually inside the portal with a perpetual walking animation and the game ui is non-functional when this happens. It is only solved when I exit and restart the game and change my party and the order of doing the doors.

Furthermore, the last section of the game after the penultimate boss feels really underwhelming. There is an epic build-up of story scenes and an entire long map section dedicated to reaching the final boss, which is extremely unimpressive and not really difficult either compaired to other boss fights in the game (even the duel with Duren in Comodo feels more challenging and impressive). The final boss only has one stage, lasts less than 2 minutes, and does not leave room for any exhibition of "the power of friendship" of the playable cast to be the polar opposite to the epic mood. After that there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in terms of an epilogue and Adol do not even see and talk to his teammates again AT ALL. This feels really outrageous for a story-rich JRPG with good characterisation of its characters. because any player will undoubtedly want more stories at this point and the game says, "No unfortunately".

Hence, it is unquestionably a good game, but one with gameplay issues here and there, and an absent ending.

Perfect game for encouragement and personal growth

keyboard durability -1
keyboard durability -1
keyboard durability -1
keyboard durability -1
keyboard durability -1
......