If Sophie was the game that is considered one of the most standard game in the series, then Firis does a 180 and changes as much things up as possible. The time limit is back to the dismay of some but it is relevant to the plot and the amount of time given is pretty generous for what you need to do. The game tries a completely different formula in the game in allowing you a ton of freedom into what you can and cannot do. After the prologue you basically can explore all areas in the game other than 5 or 6 which requires items or quest from post game to access them. Aside from a main quest around the middle that you are forced to do you can basically choose where and how you want to go about your objective at your own pace.
After the first task you set out on a journey with the final goal is to get at least three letter of recommendations before reaching the final town to take the alchemy exam. There are five total which you are able to get two before the middle check point, one in the middle and two after. You are still free to go around back and forth after it but it takes quite a bit of time. The game is basically an open world game and there are tons of quests here and there from various npc where you assist with certain tasks. However you won't be able to do all the quest as soon as you reach them, sometimes you haven't learned the recipe, sometimes the monster is just too strong for you to beat at the moment. This allows for some fun things like being able to sneak into some higher level areas for materials before you normally should have access to them. The progression and pacing of the game and areas are really nice and it becomes really easy to lose yourself in the world.
The alchemy portion of the game was tweaked a bit also. The first big thing is that all recipes have their own experience, so as you fuse more of an item it become easier to fuse that said item or even items that are related the item. Overall this is great at first but later on for items where it's hard to obtain the materials for, the grind becomes somewhat of a pain since you have to level the recipe before you can make your ideal item. Catalysts in the game do help with that, that are items that allow for easier synthesis at the cost of using another ingredient. The other big change is unlocking recipes. Unlocking them are a bit more flexible now for most of the earlier recipes but even if you aren't able to unlock them normally, you can unlock them using idea points immediately instead of doing the required objective to unlock the recipes. Idea points are gathered through out the game from quests, so in the case where you want a recipe now instead of figuring out how to unlock it you can do so.
Not much to say about the battle system other than that it feels much slower, the lack a speed up option like there was in the previous game is pretty much what causes it. The game isn't overly difficult unless you are trying to fight and beat certain things before you have the ample items or gears to do so. A lot of the big fights feels a bit lacking, but a large amount of the fights can be accessed on the maps themselves regardless of if you are ready for them or not, so deciding to fight or avoid is something to think about. The variety of locations in the game is pretty nice, with starting out in mostly grassland and forests, then later on having snow and desert locations which allows for new scenery to be found as you advance through the game.
The main portion of the game takes the course over a year and that's more than ample enough time to do what you need through the world while completing the primary objectives. In my case I finished everything and arrived with nearly 100 days remaining. After reaching the final goal you get to take an alchemy exam. The exam comes in 3 parts, a multiple choice part that is actually pretty hard unless you are good at remember a lot of random stuff while fusing. A synthesis part which is pretty easy and you can prep before hand, just fuse anything of high quality and just this section is enough to pass. Lastly a damage test, in which you try to do as much damage as possible using 1 action, whether it's an item or a skill or even just attacking. Then after wards you get to fight your fellow alchemist which is technically not part of the test but has a trophy involved for winning. Once all this is done it goes into post game.
Post game is somewhat the downfall of this game for me, as good as game was before it the post game mostly felt tedious which in part was caused by the endings which I'll talk about later. The main thing to notice is the time limit is gone now so you are free to do whatever you want. Later on after some quest having access to faster travel such as a flying broom and airship is nice. You get access to new areas such as under water areas and a few that are only accessible by airship, but none of the areas feels really unique or amazing. There are a few fun bosses here and there but some of the bosses will literally still kill you before you can get a turn until you have grinded enough to match them.
Now the main reason why post game got somewhat stale is all the side character stories. There are 8 character (well 9 but Sophie and Plachta count as 1 ending) which all have their own ending and a 9th one once you unlocked all 8. The side stories vary heavily in how interesting they are, some tell you about relationships and unanswered question about their past and having them move on from it. While other feels like they were there just because they were party member and nothing really interesting came out of it. The endings didn't really help as all of them were basically 30 seconds mini epilogues with no real substance to them.
Overall I would still call it a very good game for the meat of it was very enjoyable. The open world style is one that we haven't seen much in the series and the execution of it was enough for it to be a fun experience.
Time played ~55 hours
Rating 9/10
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