This game had mixed results, for the most part I enjoyed it, but it needed a lot of improvement as well. The game features a boy named Rush who at first is on a quest to find his sister. He first mistakenly thinks he sees her in the middle of a rather big battle, but it turns out to be a lady knight. He ends up joining up with her and a king named David as the king agrees to help Rush find his sister. Their quest takes them to many lands, but after they find his sister the game is not nearly over as now they must find out the plans of a man simply known as the Conqueror. There is more to the story and like the recent Final Fantasy XII, this games plot could use a bit of simplifying to help it be more understandable. It could also use a lot less sidequests in it as there are so many that if you do them all it takes away from the main story because you end up spending hours on the sidequests to the point you forget key points of the story. There is also something a bit off with the story as most role playing games that do not feature a romantic storyline with the main character and someone else tend to be weaker. Here it almost seems Rush and the king have a thing for each other. I am not knocking it, but I do prefer my leads to have a female romantic interest, perhaps a side character would be fine. It is not anything directly said, but I kind of picked up some vibes from those two and the ending really made me think in Japan that was the case. The fighting in the game is rather fun and annoying at the same time too. You fight in groups and the action is turn based, however you only really issue basic commands for the units and the computer decides what attacks they perform and such. This will prove to be a pain at first, but once you get into it, the fighting will become more easy to do. In the end you can control a maximum of five units with like five people or six people in them max. I found it much better to have only four units as I was able to defeat the last boss using that many. Not that the last boss was much of a problem, he was rather easily handled, a lot harder to kill is this dragon right before the final fight, but I remedied the need to fight it by slowing down time and running around him. Did I mention you slow down time to engage most enemies? Well you do, you can link together numerous battles using this speed slow down and really have massive battles. String together to many and you are doomed. There is more to the fighting, and it is a bit difficult to get used to, but once you get the hang of it, it is not so bad. The last thing I will mention is the strategy guide to this game, I shelled out twenty bucks for it and it was one of the worst strategy guides I have ever bought. The guide would not tell you where components could be found to make your comrades and your weapons stronger, but it did nearly tell you every bit of dialog in the game. Excuse me, but people buy the guides to find locations of things, not to find out the entire story. It had horrible battle strategies too, nearly every boss battle they say to multi deadlock the enemy and hope for the best, I used a tactic of holding back a unit or two to possibly heal or revive a party and it was a lot more effective than attack with everyone. In the end a few fixes in the story and battles would not hurt, but as it is it is a rather good game. The loading is a bit of a pain though, what is with the Xbox 360 that it takes so long to load?
