Finally finished this. When I played it at launch, I got so exhausted with the combat I put it down and just forgot to pick it back up til now. there’s specific problems in an otherwise amazing system and it sucks! I hope Rebirth fixes that because I otherwise did enjoy the game, especially after turning the difficulty down. A lot of the added/extended levels though... while they do mostly contribute to story and worldbuilding, there was a lot of padding throughout the game.

I wish the AI for party members was better. I had to stop the first time because combat got exhausting, as a significant chunk of it ended up just using my ATB gauge healing party members because they didnt know how to block or dodge attacks. If the game expects me to constantly monitor party members and switch around to ensure they dont get hit, while at the same time monitoring my own character and what sequence of attacks to take, that is an absurd requirement on my behalf. So, I ended up switching to Easy mode, though this felt too easy. I wish the difficulty had more options, just on an accessibility basis.

It's not my game of the year. But it's certainly close. A very gripping story enhanced by stellar performances (particularly from Ben Starr and Ralph ineson), however the grimdark felt a little self-indulgent at times, like the writer just finished a Game of Thrones marathon, and later on the general Final Fantasy-esque narrative elements made it feel a bit dissonant with the earlier tone. just compare the end of the prologue to the titan fight.

Speaking of, This has some of Masayoshi Soken's best work in it. There's some teases of his favourability for butt-rock and an interesting bit of leitmotif reference to a couple of his themes in FF14, but it's all in good fun.

For gameplay, I'm surprised by how well they blended Devil May Cry gameplay with some light RPG mechanics. While it did make the game feel a lot less tactical, the build variety was very fun and I loved trying out the different Eikons in different fights.