[h1] Don't Expect the Greatness of Aselia [/h1]
My desire to promote Visual Novel - Turn-Based Strategy hybrids is at war with the part of me that's saying if I were making one, it wouldn't be like Seinarukana. I give it a very reluctant thumbs-up after being on the fence for most of the game. No technical issues, whatsoever, is the absolute extent of what Seinarukana does better than Aselia, in my opinion.
Starting with plot. As for the two main heroines, I found their flaws to be front-and-center, overshadowing their strengths. Nozomi struck me as possessive, clingy and jealous, while her main competition Satsuki struck me as bossy, overly flirty and self-absorbed. These two don't stand up too well when compared with Aselia and Esperia. Other options presented themselves, thankfully, and I went with Katima. [spoiler] I was on the fence between Katima and Ruputna, but once I realized Ruputna wasn't the girl from the intro I immediately went Katima all the way. Glad I did; Ruputna is as dumb as a box of rocks. [/spoiler] However, the personalities of the other four romance options aren't very fleshed out. One of the biggest flaws of the plot is that there's just too damn many characters, and that causes dialogue and events to be spread pretty thin among the cast. They get lines here and there, but they're predictable and insufficient. They could've done without Naya and Narukana, just to name a couple. Maybe the reason for adding them would become evident if I played their routes, but it's not happening. Katima's route I can barely call satisfying. I picked up a few cutscenes specific to Katima and a very tiny ending scene. Seriously? After watching a great deal of the second half of Aselia change based on the romanced character I picked, I was astounded to receive so little in Seinarukana. Could be that the game wanted me to pick Nozomi or Satsuki... and then listen to them needle one another about who's got a better grip on Nozomu? Screw that. Then on top of the romance mess, the plot gets far too grandiose. Without giving specifics, it tries to do too much and gets convoluted, Person X is a pawn of Person Y who's actually dancing to the tune of Person Z the entire time... so let's just beat the hell out of everyone [spoiler] finally stopping with the creator of the worlds. [/spoiler] It goes far into the realm of ridiculousness.
Then comes the battles. I'll start by saying I was content with how Aselia did things up until the final dungeon, which was huge and had far too many nodes, making it a complete slog (and the main reason I played 2 routes instead of them all). Well, that final dungeon slog was how I felt about just about all of the battles in Seinarukana. The maps were much larger, and my army is still moving at one node at a time. Skills became a lot more complicated, which meant diving into character skill screens a lot more to make sure my team wouldn't get slaughtered. Battles were an absolute slog, and I wished for a SKIP button for the battles as they've provided for the dialog. Still, with enough planning (not to mention completely shutting off all animations, which is probably mandatory), I slogged through in hopes the plot would reward. That's when I ran into the bosses. They're cheap as all hell. When I got my ass handed to me in Aselia, I could always trace the fault back to me. When I got beat by Seinarukana, however, it was a result of the game providing insufficient information. A lot of early-ish bosses require specific skills and builds to beat successfully. While I certainly don't expect pushovers, the player needs a bit more information than that. Currently, it's a matter of going with a generic setup and hoping it sufficient, and if it isn't, I'm forced to reload and optimize my team to suit the boss. That's not the way strategy should be, in my opinion.
What kept me from a thumbs-down review was that around 3/4 of the way through, the game pulled an FFT and provided the player a "T.G. Cid" character that can literally solo the rest of the game. Nothing could stand in her way, even the final boss. She was my Easy Button, the next best thing to a SKIP button for battles, and you better believe I pressed her relentlessly. The game never punished me for it.
In the first game, after I completed Esperia's route I wanted to jump right back in and complete Aselia's route right away, and I did so, astounded at all of the new content. I hoped for the same with Seinarukana, but after completing Katima's route, I'm done. I don't want to jump back in. I don't think slogging through battles (from Chapter 8 and on only; I have the perfect save point too) is worth two (likely small) cutscenes with heroines I don't even like.
