The Legend of Heroes: Ao no Kiseki Evolution

I finally finished my third The Legend of Heroes game. In this age of where many RPGs play more like action games, there are not many old school style rpgs besides this and the Bravely series, both of which I have mixed opinions on. The Legend of Heroes is a long running series and Ao no Kiseki is the second game of the fourth storyline after Zero no Kiseki and the Evolution part is the fact that its a remake of the PSP original with updated graphics and almost fully voiced for all the main parts of the story.

The stories in The Legend of Heroes series are connected and this game is set in the city of Crossbell about a bunch of young cops who act more like teenagers who play parents with a green haired little girl.

WHAT I LIKED

+ Epic story dealing with politics, immigration, triads etc.
+ The interconnectedness of series with events in Sen no Kiseki, the first game of the fifth storyline being talked about. Not to mention the main characters from the previous Sora no Kiseki series showing up (which I've not played). How awesome is it that a major event in the next game is revealed but players when the game first game out had to wait 3 years to find out why.
+ Old school turn based combat.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE

- All the characters start of as anime cliches and they stayed the same vanilla boring characters until the very end. The story is good but the execution is so anime wordy and preachy that at times I just skipped whole chucks of boring dialogue.
- Random battles are still way to easy even on hard cause its too easy to backstab an enemy for instant win even when playing on hard. It was only at the end where they had dangerous obstacles that sometimes backstabbing is hard.
- Characters talk in stilted super formal Japanese.

SUMMARY

I appreciate the effort but like so many things in Japanese entertainment, they take an interesting concept and mire it in anime cliche. I had fun for most of it but there are parts that bored me. Big picture-wise, compared to the glut of fan quick cash grab service RPGs that have are so undercooked, this is about as good as it gets at the moment (I'm looking at you Furyu and the Shining Series) unless someone gives Camelot Software Planning money to do an RPG. It took me 140 hours to beat the game on hard spending about a third of it looking up dictionaries.