The graphical improvements and environment is great over the last one. Combat is looking good but a few too many pauses to explain things, like the character did a surprise attack then a popup came up presumably telling them what a surprise attack was.
Can't help by agree with you on the character models, I'd say the people at Tri-Ace now are different to they used to be, so it might have come with a different art directors, prehaps not. This seems to be very telling but the main thing that put me off even finishing the last 2 was story direction and in the case of Last Hope, the voice acting and sound mixing. My god it was terrible.
Hmm, pie.