Inc babbling!
I have to say that so far, I'm liking what I've seen so far of the new classes. Fencer is cool with the shifting stances, especially paired with Muscle Memory to retain your stance stats longer, and I really, really love the building of Spellcraft from the Wizard job. As a whole, it's a nice touch on things.
The chain system, I'm... so-so on. Because BP transfers over at the start of each new chain, you actually don't get your "start of turn recovery" on BP. This means that even if only one character acted and only took one action, which puts them at -1 (and then from there to 0 again at the start of the next turn), the start of the next battle in the chain has them at -1. Worse, if the other three Defaulted, they just stay at 0, because the +1 they'd get is given only at the start of the next turn. This means that unless you have some way to renew BP elsewhere, chaining is locked at a four-round chain.
So far, the only way I see this working is with everyone to have the Red Mage ability BP Recovery, which gives you 1 BP for sustaining an ailment. Then have one person do an AoE status spell (though I guess you need Black Mage for that, assuming that Group-Cast All is available via them again) to give everyone 1 BP including the user (net +0/+1/+1/+1), have another use the Freelancer ability Halfsies (consume one item for half effect on all party members; status recovery works on all normally! Just potions/ethers/etc are halved) to remove the status with a single item, and the other two use a one-BP attack. Rinse and repeat for infinite-chaining goodness as long as MP lasts. Make MP last by putting everyone in red HP and using MP Free in a Pinch with Red Mage. Annnd if you wanna get the most bang for your buck, Wizard with Full Charge (double potency if MP is full). Turn off EXP so MP never changes and viola, you have infinite chaining.
...I think. Group-Cast all was a 3 in BD (assuming it comes back), BP Recovery is 1. So that one person is at a 4/5, but only needs to spam status-ga. Then BP Recovery (1) on all three of the others, and the other two also have MP Free in a Pinch (1) and Full Charge (1) for 3/5... so can set JP boost on all four and have easy spamming of JP chaining. Dunno how many times you can chain though, but I believe it's 1 -> 1.5 -> 1.8 -> 2.0 -> 2.2 as far as I've seen. Prolly keeps going up by a x0.2 bonus each time after that.
Anyway, all this over-strategizing aside, there is one thing that just annoys me. *tableflip*
Having to choose between jobs with the Barter Sub-Stories. Two Asterisk-Bearers are facing off, and you have to choose to support one side or the other. The one you don't support, you fight, and get their asterisk, while the other is left off. From what little I can gather from places that it was released earlier, you CAN get jobs you didn't get originally earlier later, but you also have the opportunity to miss out on them depending on choices you make.
For an example of above (and this is a whole other level of spoiler):
First one is Fiore DeRosa vs. Jackal. You have to play between the moral choice and the mechanical choice; DeRosa is willing to play big at the risk of destroying a whole city and leaving the desert-dwellers to die of thirst, while Jackal is trying to protect them but doesn't give a damn about perpetual, sustainable energy. On one hand, it's morally better to support Jackal, which gets you the Red Mage job for defeating DeRosa. Red Mage isn't bad, at least (though I think Revenge got nerfed a bit). On the other, the Thief job gives you access to steals, particularly from bosses. Thankfully you get the Thief's Knife in the same dungeon for mugging via item use, but you have lower steal rates and miss out on double steals from the Thief job. It's one of those decisions that irks me so much. Next one is Summoner v. Swordmaster, and I like both of those jobs. :<
Edit: Also so slow, Seha! I'm already past you, I think. And I just got the game last night. :P