The AM spells were definitely a disappointment. The time delay thing is debatable.

The delay is feasible in an NM setting where you have plenty of time to do more than one if you so choose, but in many other cases you're simply not afforded the opportunity to use it at all. By the time it goes off everyone's gone home and you're like "Hey look everyone! my fancy spell went off at last!... guys?... anyone?!.... oh... :'( ". When you do use it, it's unimpressive at best and a complete failure at worst (more like on average).

@REDace0: I agree with you completely about trying to track down what the spell actually did. I use the log to find out 100% of the time because there's no way I'd catch it otherwise.

Oh well, just saves me 100 MP here and there I could be using to heal people on my grey mage.