>>3446854
Too many of the design choices are way too baffling to even consider it a good.
-Grinding, like you said. If each story mission story mission gave you enough exp. to be high enough level for the next story mission, or the game could have avoided increasing the CPU's level 2+ levels each mission. They could have increased reward JP also, or decrease JP requirements for each ability. As it stands now, you are almost guaranteed to waste a reaction slot just for JP boost. 3 chapters in and you'll barely have enough JP to master 2 classes with JP boost. It completely kills the pacing of the story.
-Difficulty spikes and save states. If you're new to the game and you decide to push through the story levels without grinding, you'll be completely fucked over by the Belias, the Gigas considering the game gives you a save option between two back to back story missions, one being a boss with a huge difficulty spike. If you and your party are level 20, and save before the boss fight, you might as well restart the game because the came throws 4 high health enemies that can one shot you from across the stage. It's the most retard design decision I've ever seen.
-Unit limitation to 5 character slots for each mission with story missions forcing the player to use Ramza every time, will the CPU uses 7-8 units every time. Unit placement is a crap shoot considering you're not even able to look at the map before place units down, making your decisions completely arbitrary since they're no way of knowing where your units are going to wind up until you've played the stage
-Speed stat makes the game rigidly turn based which ultimately hurts the strategy element of the game. Instead of speed effecting movement distance, you have to awkwardly position units, pass turns, and take hits just to get something simple done, this is compounded by how frustrating this game treats height difference between adjacent tiles, putting your units magic or attack out of distance. Bullshit.