I have been having a good time with this game because I was in the mood for something more laid back and simple with limited complication as far as controls are concerned. With JRPG's and especially something that is a side-scroller, there is always a really good chance that this is precisely what you are going to get. Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising certainly fits the bill with this but because it is a game that was designed with primiarly the Japanese gaming market in mind there was always going to be a ton of dialogue and boy oh boy is there a lot of that in this.
Thankfully most of it skip-able because if it wasn't I would have walked away a long time ago. I now have around 9 hours in the game and I believe I am coming close to the ending of it. This is what I have learned about this mostly wonderful journey with this game.
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The battle system is really straight forward with all of the 3 playable characters operating at once. You control who is making a hit at any time by simply pressing square for the main character, triangle for the 2nd one you encounter, and circle for the one that you last make a part of your group. Unless you press their corresponding button they aren't even ever on the screen which is nice because otherwise people would be getting hit by projectiles all the time.
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It is possible to simply pull off some pretty wicked combos that only involve pressing a few buttons and no, they are not real fussy about the timing of said combos either. So far this game is working out wonderfully for someone that is looking for a casual experience and more of an old school feel.
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The stamps are introduced as a method of progressing in the game. Certain items in shops are not available to you for purchase until you achieve a certain level of stamps in your cards. These are accomplished by a lot of different things and while it was fun at first this turns into a relatively huge amount of stupid crap that is mostly "fetch quests". NPC's will demand that you deliver a note of find a lost cat and other such nonsense and the location of all of these things is presented, thankfully, in your quest menu. If it wasn't, I think that most people would have given up. The devs did a good job of making fast-travel available from almost anywhere and this is a very good thing because you will find yourself fast-traveling from one area to another to drop off a note on a regular basis. This is not fun but at least they made it as simple as they possibly could.
I can only imagine that this was put into the game because the actual action portion of the game is really short if they didn't have it there and you will find yourself wandering to complete dozens, nay hundreds of fetch quest type stuff that doesn't take very long but it makes you wonder why they did it at all. Also, there is dialogue surrounding all of these mini-quests that have no bearing on the overall story at all and I got to the point where I don't even let the people talk, I just hold down the options button and make the dialogue go away immediately.
So this part of the game is not great, but you have to take the good with the bad.
I still suggest that casual players give this game a look because it is fun. Just be prepared to be hitting the options button to skip the chats on a regular basis.