What I did in the game: Collection 100% completed. Every characters LV30.
The One Picture I have taken: Skills section of the Collection, since it shows the post-game boss beaten and getting all Skills is more harder here than getting all Monsters. Unfortunately you can't show much completion with only 1 picture.
I've just completed the Voice of Cards Trilogy, and well, the third game, like all previous game, was still amazing. In fact, it's been a while since I had such an fulfilling JRPG experience, I really wasnt expecting so much greatness from those games. But now that I'm done, I feel kinda empty that there won't be more. First thing first, I won't go into all the details about the games. You can go read my previous experience with the first game here and the second game here. The third game still uses similar gameplay and yet again brings another twist. This time around, your characters don't gain skills as you level up (except some passive ones). Instead, the game expect you to catch monsters, and use them as your skills for your 4 characters (and there's no party swapping this time around. You'll have those 4 during the entire game). So you have a lot of customization because of that. The only problem here might be the way you get those skills. In the previous 2 games, when you won a battle, sometimes you would get loot, and you had to choose between 1 of 3 chests to get a random items. There was no way to know what item were inside each chest, but it didnt matter much, since they were mainly items you could also buy at the shop. Well, in the third game, those chests could also contains said monster skills. So, besides the fact that you have to pray the RNG God to get a loot drop, you also have to pray even more so that the one chest you pick contains a monster skill. And even more, each skill have a Star rating, most of them going up to five, so even this a up to the RNG if you want to have the best skill for your characters. You'll be able to buy items to guarantee chests at the end of the battle, but it only removes one of the 3 RNG barriers. You'll also be able to buy some Monster Skills in a shop, but they will always be 1 star. While I like catching monsters, the fact that there's no way to guarantee anything means you'll just be running in circle and grind until you get the skills you want (and there's lot of optional sidequests that will ask you specific monsters at at least 2-3 Stars Rating). They could have found a better way to handle this system.
But this is the only negative I have about this game, and it might just be a problem for completionist like me. Because of the skills hunt, I think I was always overleveled throughout the game. And the skills I had in the end-game means nothing was posing a challenge, be it the final boss or even the post-game superboss. They all went down without me even trying to use any tactics. After the brutal experience that was the second game, it was relaxing. In terms of difficulty, from hardest to easiest, I could rank the three games like this: 2 >>> 1 > 3. As for the story, it continues its descent into darkness. If the first game was an happy experience with a few dark twist and the second game was filled with sad melancholy, this game is just purely dark and depressing. The world is dead from beginning to end, no one seems to find any hapiness, and the story just leads to more pain. I don't know if it was the plan to get darker and darker as the games progress, but if so, mission accomplished! It was still a thrill to find out how this will finish.
So, now that I'm at the end, which one was my favorite? It's really hard for me to say, because I feel all three are part of a whole package, and should be experienced in order to see the small changes in gameplay and story tone. But I have a weird preference for the second one, which I know is the one people didnt liked as much. For me, the open world with sea exploration, the melancholic story that had just the right amount of sadness in it, and the soundtrack which was my favorite of the three makes it my choice. But really, I go back to what I was saying, all three must be played and all three are amazing. If you're searching for a complete and unique JRPG experience that doesn't overstay its welcome, those are perfect!
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