Mohammad Salim

This is a pseudo zen action game for me. Skippable generic story with cliche art style but graphics are impressive. Gameplay is very watered down which has somewhat satisfying moments but it get repetitive. Upping difficulty just forces you to grind a bit more rather than battle smarter. Once the game clicks, you can power through without grinding even at the grind walls (I.e., you don’t need to grind). The DLC UX stuff is annoying. The Owl Forest and collecting Owls mechanic is great and should be kept in future. Side quests are boring. Some levels look beautiful while others are bland. There isn’t enough adventure game like secrets. Bad guys have very little variety. Sometimes the game would load fast while other times slow (ie revisiting an old area). Can’t always use map to jump areas to due to some upcoming story event which made it hard to do other stuff. It really forced you down the story hole. This is a solid 6~7 out of 10 for me. I still enjoy it but plenty of other JRPGs that having been killing it last decade (Persona 5, Bloodborne,etc.). If you just compare to the generic anime JRPG world (which is what some people really like), this is definitely on the better end but the story is really very weak (I.e, Fire Emblem Three Houses had a better generic RPG story + structure + delivery). It would be nice to remove the anime gimmicks and try to modernize its narrative and art style a bit. It would also be nice if the combat had more fighting depth. I swear old Tales Of games had that but maybe I don’t remember too well?