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Biggest flaw for me, as I already mentioned, is the lack of a true party dynamic. It just feels like the structure is right there and they don't bite on it. While I like getting different characters to join your adventures, they feel useless in battle and just there for dressing. And as much as I enjoy the Torgal mechanics, I feel it never expands, and the fact he gets a power up later that gives him special moves that you have no control over(and that to my knowledge I've never ever seen?) is dull. This is made worse by combat getting a bit repetitive by the latter half.

And yeah, the gear is disappointing. I like working for the final weapon, but I never had any incentive to experiment with accessories. Definitely feels like the crafting mechanic is useless in the vanilla game which makes the equipment feel a little more useless by proxy. I think a lot of this would be relieved by having a party that you maintain and gear up, where you'd have more characters to play around with and actually have a use for all the gear you can upgrade, since half the time you have two or three weapons/armor to craft at a single moment and there's no incentive to craft the lower quality ones. Especially since resources are easy to come by.

While I generally enjoyed doing all the end-game quests and the closing out NPC storylines, it feels like there aren't a lot of tangible rewards for doing so. With no customizable magic and the gear being a bit useless, maybe something like some quest/hunt-specific special attacks would have been cool, but as is the best you get is the final weapon quest lines. Which is enjoyable. But it would be nice to have more tangible incentive to actually explore such a gorgeous world.

Also, the soundtrack is mostly incredible. Which is why it's a shame the game does an awful job of showcasing it outside of cutscenes and boss battles. A lot of the field and town music is wonderful, which is why it's infinitely annoying that during any conversations, the game turns the music volume down. There are some tracks you don't get to fully enjoy because of this, since otherwise you're just blazing through an area and barely get to hear 30 seconds of it unless you decide to linger purposefully. This is probably a nitpick, but being that the music is usually one of the best parts of a Final Fantasy, not being able to soak a lot of it in naturally is a shame.

There's also the issue of a lot of the less important NPCs looking the same(the men have like 2 stock faces that are barely changed from each other), and a bit more variety in quests could have been nice(maybe a mini-game or two), but the latter part is definitely a nitpick.

All that said, I still really enjoyed this game. Presentation and storywise it's pretty much a 10 out of 10. Well, ok, the story might not be a 10/10 but I was into it the whole way. It helps that the characters were really lovable with some excellent voice acting. The best and pretty enjoyable rewards from the sidequests was getting more characterization and intimate moments with the side characters. The graphics, lazy NPC modeling aside, are nothing short of stunning. Like the environments just had me pausing at times to just look at it all and appreciate it. The water in the Velkroy is pure beauty. And my god, the cutscenes. Yes, there's maybe too many or at least are broken up in an annoying way for some portions, but they were almost always a treat. Especially the ones involving Eikons. Some of the set pieces during boss fights just had my jaw agape as I took it all in.

And I already said it, but I loved the soundtrack. It has some "epic movie/video game" tropes that made some moments less memorable where a notable melody or rhythm could have served well. And like I said, the general mixing and implementation of the soundtrack makes it so some of the more memorable tracks don't get to shine. But this doesn't stop some of the best pieces from truly shining, especially during cutscenes and battles. I loved the re-imaginings of the FF Theme and the Prologue, making them feel more integral to the themes rather than just traditional pieces that need to be fit in somewhere. Masayoshi Soken does amazing work and when Square let him shine, he's fucking blinding. Overall, while I don't think he's topped Nobuo Uematsu as far as pure memorability, I think if Soken is the main composer going forward, then the series is in good hands.

And then the combat. Well, like I said, it gets a bit repetitive and I think if they weren't gonna commit to a couple more RPG elements than they should have leaned a bit harder into the action. But for the first half of the game, the combo system is really fun and refreshing. And while I never felt I needed to get Eikon abilities outside Phoenix/Ifrit and Garuda, once I started unlocking the super powerful moves and played around with the techniques a bit, I found myself getting a setup that was really fun to play and also hella engaging to rack up damage and stagger. I feel you take what's here, add more versatility to Torgal and give some semblance of control and management of party members, and you have an excellent ARPG combat system. As is, if you put the effort in, you can have a lot of fun with this system, but again, you're not really incentivized to do so. Particularly with the enemies being such damage sponges.

The boss battles could be better in some senses, as the big ones half the time feel more like glorified cutscenes since death is kind of meaningless and rare. But considering the shortcomings of the battle system, I found myself enjoying the change of pace for these battles. Though fights as Ifrit that weren't purely focused on set piece like moments felt less freeing than most fighting as Clive.

This is already way bigger than I planned for it to be, but I also want to give a special shout to the hunts. Not all of them were amazing, but they added some incentive to explore, and some of the S Rank hunts were the most thrilling and memorable fights of the whole thing(looking at you, Svarog).

I teared up pretty hard when Aunt May died. Was not expecting that, and to frame it as Peter's choice to save her or save many was just heart-wrenching. Also the reveal that Norman is using a symbiote to try and heal Harry was a wild twist that had me hollering at the screen. Definitely has me hyped for the sequel.

I'm glad you don't have to deal with random battles, but the boss gauntlet sucks. The final boss has two phases, and if you're trying to go in relatively blind, it's an ordeal to go through the boss gauntlet every single time just to test out different party setups on the final boss that might not work and have to try again. My first go through, I thought I was in good shape. Primary party at Level 74+, the stragglers in the 50-60 range(except poor Primrose at like 41 or maybe even high 30s). I got stomped by The Omniscent Eye. And I failed to beat Galdera on the second try. And each time the idea of carving out a chunk of time to try it again to maybe have a good party setup against Galdera was just annoying. The gauntlet bosses aren't even hard, they were just tedious. Being able to save before Galdera would have been really nice.

That said, the positive effect of this is it really forced me to min/max more than I ever have before. After the first try, I finished all the sidequests, grinded the stragglers a bit while farming items, and had everyone at 71+ with Primrose at 68. I spent some time researching skills and equipment and trying to make the optimal party to correct where I fucked up with Omniscent Eye. I setup Olberic as a Warmaster, and had Alfyn as Merchant and Tressa as Thief, while Primrose played cleric. The party was made to boost Olberic with BP and stat effects and spam Winnehild's Battlecry to kill the souls quickly and deal massive damage to the Eye. It worked like a charm. I got through it with nary a scratch and beat it with relative ease. I felt great, and with looking at the second form's HP, I thought my Therion/Runelord, Cyrus/Starseer, H'aanit/Warrior, Ophilia/Sorceror would be a bang-up team. Good healing, two of my most powerful and leveled people in Therion and Ophilia, and versatile ways to dish out breaks and damage between all four. But once I beat the three puppets covering the main body, Galdera started unleashing powerful attacks that were chopping my HP in half with one strike. Multi-strikes were even worse, Encore and Divine Aura be damned. To be fair, there was one crucial moment where my party was beat up and not setup to unleash hell, and as Ophilia, I could have used a spell that would break Galdera, or try to heal my party and survive the two turns he had before I had another turn. I thought breaking Galdera would be too greedy, and part of this was because I wanted to rely on Ophilia for damage as much as healing and didn't want to waste a break opportunity having to heal. I chose to heal and proceeded to kill me in those two turns.

Determined to not have to do this again, I went deeper. Now, I was actually looking at damage calculations. I was realizing how important all the multipliers were, and that using a same strategy as my Olberic party could be more optimal. Rather than trying to have a party that could equally support and damage for the second fight, I would ultimately focus on finding another ultimate attack comparable to Winnehild's Battlecry to boost and spam for the win. I tried to think of some strategies that would involve just bringing Olberic over to the second party and replacing his damage output, and honestly I probably could have swapped the two and it would have worked fine, but I was concerned that switching out Olberic would kill the successful dynamic I had for the Eye, plus Winnehild's works well for getting easier breaks, and I thought that was more vital.

But Therion was my first character to break the 9999 damage cap with Aeber's Reckoning, and sure enough, I found a way to boost his damage all the way to 85k with that move if I got all multipliers in there(including BP Eater). And though the fight was still harrowing, the strategy(plus taking the opportunity to break Galdera whenever it was there) paid off. I swapped Tressa and H'aanit to have Armor Corrosive and Donate BP in the second party, and had Ophilia focus on support except when she could break or didn't need to support, and while I couldn't fully maximize Therion's damage output due to not having a strength boost, I was still hitting for 68,000, and I got through it with relative ease in comparison to the first try.