TLS Community Playthrough 2017 - Voting

Yup, it sucks alright. The trade-off of more flexibility for fewer nodes might have been worth considering if the game wasn't so damn easy. Don't get me wrong, I love the battle system, but there are only a handful of interesting fights in the whole game. Almost every random encounter boils down to "there's a flying enemy, I'll switch in Wakka" or "there's a machina, I'll switch in Rikku", etc. How many times would you really benefit from having, say, two black mages? I can only think of a few, but since it's already possible to have two black mages on the regular sphere grid by sending Kimahri down Lulu's path, the question becomes: How many times would you really benefit from having three black mages? Almost never. And would it be worth sacrificing another of the "jobs" for? Absolutely not.

[/rant]

In the case of the expert grid, that argument is a bit specious given that it's incredibly easy to take characters in whatever direction you desire. So "oh it's a flying enemy, better use Yuna" becomes a legitimate prospect. That said, that is literally the ONLY reason to play the expert grid. You're better off taking Kimahri through sneaky paths to learn really strong abilities SUPER QUICKLY.

also the fewer nodes don't hurt you QUITE as much as you'd think, since they all end up being HP +300s and you VERY RARELY (literally one fight in the game) need Break HP Limit; on top of THAT, you can also save a ton on nodes by simply maxing Luck and taking an additional ~32 Accuracy from base, as both Accuracy and Evasion are calculated by the Luck anf Acc/Eva of attacker and target (tldr just max luck, fuck evasion)

I should probably spend less time on ffx

I thought about mentioning that counter-argument but I realised it's purely a cosmetic difference and not actually a benefit for the expert grid. Though in the specific case you mentioned, Yuna is an objectively worse hitter of flying things than Wakka because she can't reach some of them.

Why do you think it sucks?

Because honestly, it's not really that different from the original grid - characters still get the same or similar stats on their grids, and at roughly the same rate. Same abilities, and the OVERALL structure of their grids is almost the same, too. Yeah, you get a lot more "well I started over here but ended up WAY over here", but it begs the question "what's the point?" It doesn't really serve any purpose. On top of that, it's REALLY easy to send characters down the wrong path ("wrong" by player choice, in that you might want to put someone down "Yuna's" path and end up accidentally taking them down "Rikku's" without realizing it) because there's a lot fewer Lock Spheres to divide them up (rather, there's still a shitload of locks, but there's LOTS of "take this left or right fork" and the left will take you where you want to go, but the right takes you to another character's grid without warning).

ALSO, I really dislike how certain character's grids (Rikku, I'm looking at you) have a FUCKTON of just completely empty nodes in certain sections, which makes going there entirely pointless if you don't have the bajillion key spheres required to get to "the ability" (look at the upper left corner of the grid - a handful of low increase, shitty stat spheres and ONE ability flanked by like 5 or 6 locks, which iirc are all level 4).

tldr unnecessarily complicates things that didn't need to be complicated; original grid has more nodes which means more stats, and easier to bust the game open with kimahri for lulz (if you're into that)