Seiken Densetsu 3

The point at which I stopped caring: when I went up against groups of three super-birds, each of whom could petrify a party member, or could alternately attack a character quickly enough that half of his health disappeared almost instantly. Maybe I wasn't grinding levels enough (not that this would make me more likely to grind levels). Or maybe I picked the wrong characters, or increased the wrong stats: I felt like I was building a strong, balanced party, with a powerful melee character backed up by heavy offensive magic and healing magic; but since most of the party members you can choose are melee, maybe the game was never really designed for my setup. Keeping my fragile magic users out of harm's way was generally more challenging than I'd expected.

Aside from my difficulty-related quibbles, there's disappointingly little to say about SD3. Mostly, it just feels very reminiscent of its predecessor. In theory the party-selection and character class aspects make it a deeper and more interesting game -- but after six and a half hours of not seeing anything in terms of character class, my enthusiasm for the system has been thoroughly dashed.

At any rate, special thanks to the fan translation, which is pretty fantastic.

Progress: Gave Up -- Got Shade, on some stupid volcano island