Finished this a few weeks ago. Visually stunning. Lots to do and many fun different gimmicks and game-modes.

Online play had bugs here and there but I blame EA not the devs. The gameplay itself was not very innovative. It was extremely easy at times. The main two characters were a bit unlikeable to me. Rose was sort of interesting at first but the story just dragged on without developing her or revealing anything. I would've preferred if they explored her a little in the beginning and she was left a total mystery. The ending felt,,,, very awkward and anticlimactic. Honestly the entire story felt like it was lacking in direction and not in a good "spontaneous Odyssey journey" way but more like a "things keep randomly happening but the story hasn't advanced at all" way. It reminded me of the first Avatar movie which was full of stunning scenes (the whale, the musical(?) world, the skiing town, etc.) that didn't amount to a cohesive aesthetic or story. I also didn't think the character arcs or development made much sense and many of their conflicts with one another felt contrived. The book of love's character.... was okay. I wasn't gagging the way the millennials were but at least he kind of had charisma. It felt less like he was guiding them to profound self-realizations and more like he was assigning random cruel Herculean tasks to the two and then beating them over the head with some dull platitude as a message. Actually, overall the game has the tone of Buzzfeed/Jackbox/Corporate-bonding-event but if you don't mind that sort of vibe then you might not find the game so bad at all.

It feels a bit bad to rate it so low because the game brought me many fun hours. But as a narrative and as a work of art (and even just as a video game) I thought it was pretty subpar.

I recommend this game if you and your partner want to play a video game together and have no better choices.

Bro I am a yuge freaking Dragon Quest mark, bro. I bought Dragon Quest XI twice because the Amazon deliveryman was taking too long to deliver the physical version I preordered. Dragon Quest VIII helped me through not one, but two very rough times in my life. I actively have to fight back tears whenever I hear the Overture. I'm an apologist for pretty much everything people criticize about the series. I can't make apologies for a game that just straight up doesn't fucking work, though.

Dragon Quest Swords looks nice and has a charming enough premise, but the motion controls are so inaccurate and unreliable that it feels like the game is against you at all times. You can thrust all you want, you're getting a horizontal slash. Wanted a horizontal slash? You're getting a fucking thrust and you're going to like it. Simple vertical slashes? Never heard of them, you're getting a diagonal and the group of enemies you were trying to attack with them are going to run away and it'll affect your ranking. That a game with controls this bad has the gall to judge you on your performance is so infuriating it lacks a further expletive. I'll return the favor by judging this as a bad cash-in for the then-wildly popular Nintendo console and playing some fuckin' Boom Blox instead.

This game has the worst balancing and level design ever.
You basically have to grind Job Points all the time to have good enough abilities, to finish the fights (on top of that most enemies regularly out-level you, if you don't do excessive grinding in-between story missions)

But is has soooo much going for it. The Job System ist unparalleled to any other FF game, to only one to rival it maybe is the Bravely series.
The story - while with a much darker time than most other ffs - is really interestingly told, the conflict complex... A lot of places, organizations etc are only mentioned briefly so it can get pretty confusing though. And the world seems a little boring - fantasywise- compared to other FF games
The gameplay variety is also not so deep...
Talking about this...
Confusing terminology, pretty linear gameplay consisting only of run and fight... That's exactly the kind of criticism usually reserved for FFXIII, but somehow this one is hailed as a classic, the other as one of the worst FF games... Even though this one necessitates you to grind all the god-damn time