I overheard a battle theme I liked after finishing a mediocre battle. When I went to isolate it from the game and listen to it on my own, I immediately realized how similar it was to Xenoblade Chronicles' main battle theme. No matter how much the character design and music tries to convince you it's Final Fantasy, all of this immediately falls apart the second you open your map and see a secret chest while wearing your Assassin's Creed outfit and go to collect the hidden page while engaging in shitty battles all while the characters repeat the same 3 lines of dialogue despite having some of the most naturalistic animation ever produced. There are no trailing missions though, so I can see why people give this a 3/5.

Never played a game that made me go, "I love fire emblem!" until I played this one. Great map design, unlike 3Houses.
For context on what the story is like, there is a shot in the prologue of the castle below the Somniel that looks like one of the default title screens for an RPGMaker game. Thankfully, character interactions within supports are consistently entertaining, even though they lack the potential to illustrate a legitimate sense of growth through the means of a time skip like they did in 3Houses, that's obviously not what they're going for. I also really liked Mika Pikazo's illustrations for the overall art direction the game has. Just looks gorgeous when viewing in full.

Those first few hours with the game were magical. Trying your best to find your solution rather than find the solution is such a powerful statement illustrated through gameplay, rather than trying to get that point across through a story where the bad guy loses to the good guy in a really lame and uninspired way. Visually, the game looks spectacular, it's at its best when the sun is going down and the Hylian Shield reflects the light, making the colors just pop. Everything from exploring caves and getting rewarded with useful gear and items, to exploring the sky islands and solving a puzzle in the most unconventional and inappropriate way was nothing short of intentional from the developers, and I absolutely loved that experience, and I appreciate even more that the game doesn't try to do anything more than that, because I saw what they did with the story, unfortunately.

Now allow me to tell you the story of my people during the Poo poo wars a very very long time ago. Like long enough for my stuff to be called ancient.