I'm a little bit into chapter 2 now, and I'm still enjoying the story just fine. I mean it's not visual novel good or anything but I've heard a few times that the story is a bit of a drag early on and then is much better by the 2nd half of the game. But even now I find the story to be more enjoyable than pretty much any final fantasy game (including the ones I like), baldur's gate, skyrim, whatever.
The combat is really wonky though. It's actually kinda like Ys where even the most mundane stuff absolutely MAULS you faster than you can blink if you're underlevel/geared (seems gear matters more than level tbh), but you get exp so effing fast if you're underleveld that you'll be on par really quick, and then every boss is relatively easy because getting to them is near impossible without at least being normal level unless you intentionally avoid absolutely everything. But yeah, then if your gear/level is up to date, stuff that would 2 shot you before suddenly starts 10 shotting you. Overall I think the difficulty in combat is actually better than most JRPGs (which tend to be really effing easy no matter what).
I just wish you could control where you move to if you choose to attack something, or that it would let you attack for "free" if you manually select move and end up in a position capable of attacking. That said the combat in this game is actually very much like the first lunar game (I say the first because I haven't played any others other than silver star and eternal blue, and in eternal blue, though the system was the same, every character generally had more than enough move for it to almost never matter). The only exception is the addition of the CP mechanics and bonus bar thing.
people also probably know but if not. If you get into a fight with some shining poms, and you care more about the sepiths rewarded than the exp, then hitting one with Estelle's pummel attack actually gives you more sepith than killing one. So you may want to make sure you pummel one during a sepith up turn if possible, even if it lowers your chances of actually landing a kill somewhat.
I SUSPECT that whip-lady's cancel attack thing works the same way but I never had the opportunity to try it yet. Josh's cancel attack does NOT litter crystals everywhere though.
edit:
oops, I mean pummel/whip lady during the sepith up bonus event thing. Pummel hits the enemy a gajillion times for purposes of making crystals fall (even though it only shows you one damage number in the end).
