In my opinion this is one of those games that suffers from being open world more than it benefits from it. The absurd amount of crafting ingredients makes even the purple item pickups not be something I'm excited about. The vast open space and the refusal to have any way to track questlines makes content even more missable than they already were in Dark Souls. The amount of very similar catacombs and mines with the same bosses just to fill the empty space sucks.

But in terms of action, this is probably the best it has ever felt. I was also way more invested in the storyline than in any other souls game because this is a world that feels alive and able to be meaningfully changed. This is also a really pretty game, it's nice to finally see a color other than gray in a Souls game and all the designs are really cool. The spirit ashes are another way to grant you the power to adjust your own difficulty and it's much appreciated.

Really fun RPG! The mechanics are very simple compared to a lot of recent RPGs, which helps you really appreciate the vibes. The graphics are beautiful, I love the use of color and shading, the Toriyama style really shines here. The music is what you'd expect, I just wish there was more variation.

Act 1 was really fun, the whole usual JRPG lets save the world kind of deal with a sorta predictable twist. Act 2 had a cool concept and pretty alright execution even if revisiting places and recruiting people again felt too repetitive at some points. Act 3 had the best story in my opinion, but the difficulty spike was so tall that I had a hard time having any fun without grinding (I gave up on grinding so I didn't finish all the side content). Overall pretty typical Dragon Quest story, but it can be refreshing to come back to a franchise that is so sincere and wears its heart on its sleeve.