this is my first Lemmy post and I'm still not sure if there are spoiler tags and such, so I'll try to avoid spoilers as much as possible.

anyway, I don't like this game.

I initially found the combat very fun but mostly flashy. Later on as I got more eikons and I slowly found something that was efficient for me towards the end, I had very little reason to go back and switch up but I appreciated the flexibility. The problem was that all fights essentially went the same way, and it ended up feeling like the combat system wasn't deep enough. I really liked the hunts, however. And there was a particular boss battle that I think was truly executed perfectly.

Outside of combat, gameplay is dire. It's not really worth exploring outside of the critical path - the loot is worthless. Way too many "talk to this person"-style sub quests with, more often than not, little payoff.

The plot is, I think, abysmal. The whole slave story is handled extremely poorly, and seeing how dumb the approach to this theme is, it's not surprising that they flat out refused to include any black people. The outrage would've been too much. Fortunately (?) this whole slave stuff is forgotten halfway through, so you won't really see more of it unless you focus on the side quests. Which... yikes. Some of the worst writing in the game can be found on the side quests. I initially was excited when Vivian was introduced, as I love me a good Map with Floating Heads of Key Players Where I Learn about the State of the World Sequence... but my god it all amounts to nothing but very convoluted ways of saying stuff like "the army moved to this location". Incredibly tedious, and disappointing. As much of a bummer as this whole world is imo.

And speaking of bad writing, all the female characters of the main cast were done a disservice here. Jill during the Iron Kingdom boss fight was especially done dirty.

I have played every single FF from IV till XV (excluding the XIII series), and I don't think this series will be for me anymore if it continues on this direction. I wish this game hadn't disappointed me as much as it did. Spectacle isn't enough to carry a game for me, and while I was not expecting something extraordinary I did expect something more thoughtful than this.

Oh well at least there is still Xenoblade.