Unfortunately, this game just doesn't quite do it for me. The characters aren't all that compelling, and the plot just kind of slogs along slowly. There's a huge amount of content, but a lot of it feels like filler. There are so many characters who are just kind of mundane time-wasters. The core plot is actually pretty neat and a bit of a unique twist on a standard JRPG formula, but so many of the characters just don't really add a lot of value to it. The gameplay loop is weirdly formulaic for most of the game - you go to a location, find out about a local problem, go do the local dungeon, return to the location, go travel to the new location. There's never two dungeons in a row, or any kind of "go do multiple things at once" situation. There's nothing really mixing up that formula as you progress through the game even though you get new forms of transportation and an old school big world map which allows you to revisit old locations. The old locations don't really get updated, except when they receive stealth updates as the plot goes on, so if you don't want to miss out on skits and new advancements you have to laboriously check all of them (when most of them haven't changed). The combat is also less than satisfying, because so many of your team's attacks knock enemies down, during which time you can't really combo on the enemies.

It's like the pieces are mostly there but they're just not assembled in a satisfying way to make a finished product. The game needed just a little more polish and I guess that came later in the series' lifespan as they iterated on this version of the combat system.

I also experienced some issues with controller recognition, and more than once had to exit the game and re-open it to get it to recognize my controller again for whatever reason. Also note that my Steam playtime is inflated due to steam continuing to count time while I'm alt-tabbed out with the game paused and chatting in discord or whatever. Real playtime around 50 hours. Completionists would spend more time than that as there is a great deal of extra content including a lot of postgame, but you'd have to be a real diehard for the game to want to do it all.

Unfortunately, this game just doesn't quite do it for me. The characters aren't all that compelling, and the plot just kind of slogs along slowly. There's a huge amount of content, but a lot of it feels like filler. There are so many characters who are just kind of mundane time-wasters. The core plot is actually pretty neat and a bit of a unique twist on a standard JRPG formula, but so many of the characters just don't really add a lot of value to it. The gameplay loop is weirdly formulaic for most of the game - you go to a location, find out about a local problem, go do the local dungeon, return to the location, go travel to the new location. There's never two dungeons in a row, or any kind of "go do multiple things at once" situation. There's nothing really mixing up that formula as you progress through the game even though you get new forms of transportation and an old school big world map which allows you to revisit old locations. The old locations don't really get updated, except when they receive stealth updates as the plot goes on, so if you don't want to miss out on skits and new advancements you have to laboriously check all of them (when most of them haven't changed). The combat is also less than satisfying, because so many of your team's attacks knock enemies down, during which time you can't really combo on the enemies. It's like the pieces are mostly there but they're just not assembled in a satisfying way to make a finished product. The game needed just a little more polish and I guess that came later in the series' lifespan as they iterated on this version of the combat system. I also experienced some issues with controller recognition, and more than once had to exit the game and re-open it to get it to recognize my controller again for whatever reason. Also note that my Steam playtime is inflated due to steam continuing to count time while I'm alt-tabbed out with the game paused and chatting in discord or whatever. Real playtime around 50 hours. Completionists would spend more time than that as there is a great deal of extra content including a lot of postgame, but you'd have to be a real diehard for the game to want to do it all.