Death abounds
The first is that every player character loses a bit of life with every action they take. Every sword swung or spell cast brings them a little closer to death. Their energy can only be restored by scarifying another character. The same holds true for weapons. So for every attack, you bring two of your assets closer to death. It's like the game is penalizing you for playing.
Characters and weapons amass experience and can be upgraded, but what's the point? Since they'll eventually die, the time invested in their growth feels wasted. Prior to playing you need to shut off any emotional connection you could have and approach the characters as you would an Option in Gradius.
The second flaw is the restrains laid down during the actual battles. You're limited to deploying only two or three soldiers to the field. The game designates where on the map these solders can deploy to. Since most can't move, they operate more like turrets, waiting for enemies to wander into their attack zones. (Of the few that can move, some of them are limited to moving in only two directions and its possible to get them jammed in a corner.) Finally, soldiers are limited to facing only two directions: either down and right or up and left. While you have the option of placing any of your soldiers in the slots provided, only a few will be actually effective in a given slot.
The story is the final problem. You're dropped into the aftermath of some battle where a female knight goes around reminiscing as if you, the player, know something about it. It doesn't help that the exposition jumps around the timeline. This was probably an attempt to put the player in the shoes of the wisp, who fell at that battle (I think). But after 7 hours of play, the story had'nt given up who I was, who the female knight "guide" was or why I was fighting.
The music is good and conveys a sense of grand scope and adventure. Artwork is beautiful and special effects are pretty nice - especially when you land a hit and trigger a shower of crystals that has your wisp racing around to catch. The gameplay has its moments, too. When everything is setup just right - when (after much trial and error) you figure out which characters are just right for a particular map, there is something satisfying seeing that axe or sword connect. But those moments are too few and too far apart and require too much work to make me want to continue playing after a few hours.