The game picks up a lot in the second half.
The main things that brings down the first half aside from the very, very, very slow opening are the wolf segments. If it weren't for those, I'd enjoy the first half much more because the dungeons are simply very good, and I felt the progression was pretty epic otherwise.
TP probably has the slowest pacing in the series, but it also has some of the best dungeons and the pacing certainly does not majorly hurt the game, IMO. I don't know if the game is savage-able for you at this point, but all I can say is I agree to some degree with certain things, but disagree that it's anything less than a great game.







