Has your friend turned off attack/skill animations for players not in his party? I play on PS3, don't have the fastest internet, don't have an SSD to improve loading times and I can fairly easily gold any fate I participate in. I turned the animations for non-party characters to "off" to relieve a little bit of the fate lag, but it was far from unplayable before I changed that setting.

I understand the frustration that it may not run as well as it does on a PC, but I disagree that it's "unplayable."