A before going on to section B, but there are a few optional side quests. I found these side quests, though few, to be some of the brightest points of the game. One of them involved solving the marital problems of one of your childhood friends. Far more interesting than it sounds, this quest had you doing a bunch of detective work, very little combat, and ended with a suspenseful final battle and a chase. Character Abilities and Skills screens.
Character development is fairly trivial.
Magic gets further subdivided into in to four spheres, corresponding to the four elements. At the very beginning, you get to tweak the main characters three abilities, but that's it. The skills advance with use. You never get to spend any points manually, skills just go up by themselves. In addition, you don't get to modify your companions at all.