While in battle, the characters seem to lose half of their IQ. This is best explained with an example of their battle cries/chatter. Senel rarely says anything other than "Hoo-ha! Eat this!" Occasionally, he'll yell out something like "Now, Moses! Now!" - this means that he's distracting the enemy with the little stars that dance around his head so that Moses can make his move. Chloe, on the other hand, just talks a bit too much. When fighting monsters that exclusively fly, that never touch the ground unless you hit them really hard, she'll call out a surprised "They can attack from the air!" a couple times. If an enemy is using one of those field effects, she'll warn you, "It's dangerous to get too close!" once the entire party is under the status effect.
Chloe also has trouble talking coherently in battle, a problem which is partially due to everyone talking over eachother. I can't tell you how many times I've misheard her attack names (Newman Rising, for example. That could be one scary fucking attack) - but to be fair, I also once misread a menu so that "Chocolate Something Crunch" said "Chocolate Naked Church."
The monsters are really fun, though - so fun that I'm really missing the Monster Book from ToS. ToS didn't have any particularly memorable monsters in it, so maybe the Monster Book went a little unused, but it would've been nice in the case of ToL. ToL has monsters like Gelures Scissors and a freaking Watermelon Element. Plus, I would dearly love to be able to get a close look at those Ere monsters; I've been trying to figure out what those bastards are from the beginning of the game. As far as I can tell, they're fancily dressed bugs with wands.
Also, the general setup of the game is incredibly formulaic. The first 20-30 hours of the game is the "main title." Shirley spends all of this being captured, possessed, or otherwise kept away from the rest of the group. After the main title, there's another 40 hours or so of what could have been side quests. This means that this group saves the world twice. Now, Yuna saved the world twice, but she at least managed to separate that into two games. But no, the ToL crew winds up saving the world twice in what turns out to be less than two whole days each time.
At the time of this writing, I've just passed the Mirage Palace in Jay's character quest. This palace is made of slices of oranges and was apparently filled with otter corpses - I can't think of any other reason the group didn't stop to heal them like they did for Quppo and the guys at the entrance. But it's okay, Chloe reassures us - they're still cute. Yes, the unconscious/dead otters, after having their asses handed to them on a platter by ninjas (who should never wear orange, by the way) are, most importantly, still cute.
So now I'm worried about Chloe. Is she a closet necro/otter-phile?
But more importantly, I now want to write a goth!otter!Sue fic. She'll be named Amblonyx Lutrina Pectinidae, and she'll angst over her family and friends who were killed by orange ninjas.
Ahem. Excuse me. I'll discuss this matter more once I've finished mentally squeeing over the idea of an otter dressed in omg teh gawthick clothes doing the *ors* dance.
Will likes to pretend he's not a sheriff. Okay, fine, whatever. Why, then, does he have jail cells in his basement? What would he use them for, if not to hold criminals?
Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Filthy-minded bastards.
Perhaps a more important question would be this: Did the cells come with the house, or were they installed afterwards? When he was previewing it before buying, did he say, "Well, this is a nice house, except for...this...Why are there cells in the basement?" or something more like "Wow, add a few iron bars to the basement, and this house will be perfect for hiding my victims"?
I'm not entirely sure I want to know.