I haven’t had a ton of time to play over the last couple days, but I got to the point with the side quests where they start pushing you through the story line areas of the game, which coincidentally allowed me to open up cie’th waypoints  which weren’t available the first time I went through the next area. On that note, I strongly suggest doing the Steppes missions until 16 or 17 before moving on, if only for simple travel if you need to back track for items or missed treasure or whatever.

The timing was good because the missions were getting sort of tiresome.

At this point, I’m thinking this Final Fantasy might be the one I’m most likely to replay… I’ve yet to hit a section of the game that I’d dread playing through again, and thats saying something for 40 hrs of content. I usually find one such place half way through but it doesn’t seem to be here.

The game has gone back to the corridor feel, the longer I’m in it the more I think it’s ok, it really does drive the story which is important in this game.