I have now made my way to chapter seven. Hope is on his way from emo to psychotic knife wielding maniac while Lighting is making her way from psychotic knife wielding maniac to emo. Balance folks, there has to be balance.
Meanwhile, after hopping and skipping their way through the Disco Forest and battling mutated tomatoes and dancing frogs, Perky Aussie and Danny Glover get ready to board a boat for Vegas. At this point Vanilles happy go lucky exterior is starting to show some cracks, while Danny is having thoughts ranging from "I'm getting too old for this shit" through "she's too young for me" all the way south to "maybe I should blow my brains out and take my pals with me" territory.
At this point the game is foreshadowing my predicted plot twist in a way that's about as subtle as a hungry dog eyeing a juicy steak. I only have two out of potential six transformers, so I would assume I'm about a third of the way through the game. The story is picking up, the visuals are fantastic and the battle system is getting a little less annoying as more options open up. I still think it's a weak entry in the Final Fantasy franchise due to the amount of content that was stripped for the sake of storytelling. As its own thing though, its not half bad.
Speaking of the battle system, I finally decided on a fine blend of autobattle and carefully hand picked commands. This does seem to be working out fairly well so far. At one point the game told me that there are some enemy types that I probably should avoid. Naturally, the first thing I did when I saw one was to run head first into it's ass, attack and proceeded to lay a five star smack down on said ass. In the end, I decided that while I can beat it, the time required was simply not worth the rewards.
I now face the terrifying prospect of a frustrating stealth section, though I may simply opt to just go the balls to the wall guns blazing path and beat the snot out of everyone that gets in my way, especially since lightning is now sporting a level 20 forgotitsname sword that I probably shouldn't have upgraded so much in the first place.