Based on the opening scene alone, I am both encouraged and discouraged. The men are dressed more revealingly than the women, which is always nice just for a bit of fair objectification. The game seems to realize that its audience is mostly girls. However, judging from what I saw, the girls are again the standard fair of magic users and archers. Admittedly, girls have less upper body strength than men, but still! I want a badass girl, like Payne from FFX-2. Someone who has a sword and knows how to use it. I would even take a girl who could at least deal as much damage with her bow as a man can with his sword, but I take what I can get. This applies to guns too, for the record. I've yet to understand why a girl with a gun doesn't pwn a guy with a sword.
The game has great graphics in-game, not just in-cut scene, which is nice. Save-games are done with the standard glowing circle on the ground. I would kill for a different way to save in one of these JRPGs. Someday, you will be able to save by going into a phonebooth and making a call. It will be nice. As a nice plus, there are different sounds when walking depending on what Luke is walking on-- metal, stone, grass, etc. Also the voice actor for Guy is the same as Vash the Stampede from Trigun! WIN! Voice acting is for some reason not happening in the cut scenes when I press select, which I feel is an issue, since all the other sound is gone at those times as well. Did they not feel like paying the voice actors extra or something? On the battle system, it's pretty cool. Battles aren't random-- you can see your enemies and have to engage them, or they engage you. Different attacks are assigned to different buttons.
I got a real sense of the main character's, Luke's, boundaries and how caged in he felt. Just as he probably felt, I started to feel annoyed that I couldn't explore places without people telling me where not to go and who not to talk to. His room was very small for the son of a duke, too, which was strange, but did play in to that feeling of confinement. I'm still trying to decide whether I'm annoyed about how the maids fawn over Guy and stand around him in a pack, harassing him to go out with them. Also, I am definitely annoyed by how Luke's parents pander to his selfish whims. I can, however, see how Luke got to be the way he is. I find it amusing how Duke Fabre and Susanne share a bedroom, but not a bed-- there are two beds in their room. And the fact that it's "Duke and Madam Favre" frustrates my sense of how titles should go, since it should be "Duke and Duchess," especially since Susanne was once a princess.
In terms of kickass girlhood, Tear is pretty awesome, even though her superpower is her singing. I might be able to consider that her taking pride in a feminine art? I don't know. However, though her entrance was good, the next thing she does is act all motherly. ARGH! Maybe it's the voice actor's fault and she was supposed to seem pragmatic.
Carriages are pulled by dinosaur things. Oh, and there's a land-ship thing that looks like the Celsius from FFX-2. A "land dreadnaught" called the Tartarus. I leave you on that note.
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