Xenosaga 3: Mixed feelings

 So I kept playing, just finished chapter... 4, if I´m not mistaken, and am about 8 hours in. So far, the game is VERY linear, I´ve only had a chance to go back to previous dungeons once. Funny how I mentioned that Shion hasn´t changed... she has, she is an a$$hole now. Miyuki, who often messes up, is victim to Shion´s verbal abuse, heck, even when Jin defended Miyuki "It´s not her fault", Shion didn´t even apologise.
 Funny thing I noticed? On most scenes, the whole cast is never on screen at the same time. It gets a bit jarring when only three characters are talking, since the whole party is supposed to be with them. Ziggy and MOMO, the most interesting pair, get shuffled to the side, they haven´t gotten many lines yet. Speaking of which, Jr is in almost every scene, and he always gets the most lines, holy S... I can´t deal with this. Jr is one of my two most hated characters ever, I don´t know if I will survive so much Jr.
 What annoys me the most, is that even the side characters are annoying. I just met Mai, first thought? "Oh, she looks like Mariah from Xenogears, cool". Seconds later? What an annoying character. I suppose they tried to be funny with the whole "Thinks they are with U-Tic but they are not", but both the Voice Actress and the Dialogue itself is bad. Really, really bad. It´s hard to root for the main characters: Shion is plain and boring, and now you can add douchy to the list. Jr is just plain annoying, specially his personality, his squeaky voice doesn´t help.
 One thing that still annoys me, is Juli Mizrahi. When she first found out that KOS-MOS was up for scrapping, she didn´t even care. Once she found out she needed KOS-MOS, now she cared, but what grinds me, is that then she tells Shion "KOS-MOS is unique, she has a heart bla bla bla". Seriously? You didn´t even care that she was gonna be disposed of, and now you care? Really? And what does Shion answer? "You think she has a heart?"... Seriously? You´ve been treating her like more than a robot, and you question the existance of her "heart"? REALLY?
 For what it´s worth, the gameplay is actually fun. Seems they heard my "Bosses are too easy" complaints from part 2(They predicted I´d think that), so now bosses are actually hard. And I mean REALLY hard. Not SMT hard, but hard. It´s nice. I tend to prefer ES combat, since it feels faster and looks cooler, but on-foot combat is not bad, just a tad generic. Exploring is fun, the fact that the enviroments look SO good makes it even more engaging, you always want to see what comes next. It´s a shame the story, dialogue and characters are so bad. At least the Xenogears references make me quite happy.