I bought this game after seeing praise and getting a bit of a jrpg bug, I tried it ofer the course of a weekend and dropped it, glad I bought it on sale. I haven't played that many jrpgs, and only finished a couple, so maybe I'm just not the target audiance for this kind of game, but whatever. My first complaint is of the art and story up until the 10 hour mark at which I dropped it. The game seems to really want to be an anime at the cost of everything else, which seems par for the course of this studio. Enemies are generally big and exaggerated without feeling so, which makes them seem boring. Character designs seem to pull from different clashing styles lacking artistical consistency to the point of being grading on the eyes. It also seems little to no thought is put into the worldbuilding, with many of the in-game locations being thinly veiled similies for historical civilizations. The maps also seem uninspired; like someone drew random boundaries on a notebook and that was it. Lots of invisible walls, and no queues from interesting terrain, no visible expertise on world design. The gameplay is what gets me though. It just doesn't feel fun. There's no risk or reward, as at any point not in a dungeon you can just stop and get your health back. As long as you can beat any encounter on full health, you shouldn't have an issue with them at all. Besides specific enemy info and attack patterns, which is all laid out pretty simply, there doesn't seem to be much of an increase in the technicality of gameplay as you progress. All it boils down to is picking the right character to attack an enemy with, knowing which skills to use, and either blocking or dodging at the correct time. Combat doesn't feel fluid. Less clunky than other games in the studio, but seeing as it's the most important part of the game, not enough to keep me playing. I'll leave my conclusion short and say that this game should pull more inspiration from more succesful jp studios like platinum and
