Man ionno
I was supremely hyped for this game and wasnt turned off by the idea of making it action instead of turn based. I enjoy the fact that each new final fantasy can be something completely diifferent.
The first third or so of the game really hooked me with its interesting characters and natural way of talking. The concet of summons being these huge monsters being used in wars is cool. And Cid is the best character in this game. This world and story is being set up as a (clearly game of thrones inspired) mature fantasy setting with a focus on politics. But slowly more and more specific moments happened that made me lose slightly more interest in the storyline.
The first big turnoff was Benedictas death, and how her whole story was handled. At first i was happy that Clive can get powers of the other Eikons without having to kill the other person, but then she just goes mad and dies anyways. She couldve been a cool villain with a potential redemption but then some very questionable scenes happen and she is kinda reduced to being a motivation for a guy to be evil.
The next thing that made me lose interest even more quickly was Cids death.
As soon as he was gone you realize how desperately all these other characters needed Cid to bounce off of. Normally Im happy when big characters in a game like this can axtually just die as it adds stakes to the story, and cids death did change the story a lot but it just became a lot less interesting to me. Clive was very fun and interesting when he had Cid as a foil in conversations, but Clive on his own, or with Jill or Joshua or any other character is just boring normal hero guy. He is very well acted and likeable i guess, but after cids death he is just the big hero that everyone adores.
Jill was also fumbled i think. Its good that she had a big moment killing her slavers, but after that (and before) she is just a big nothing character. I couldnt tell you a single personality trait, she was just 'a person'.

The entire pacing of the story also just falls off after the time skip. First, its weird that basically nothing happened in 5 years. Also, from this point I noticed more and more that the actual politics are losing importance and it slowly turned into a 'kill all the evil bosses and gain their powers' type story. The thing that breaks it up is a lot of filler and boring side quests. Ultima was also a lame villain and I wouldve enjoyed it being a more personal final boss instead of just random god being that has no personality.
Big highlight were the absolutely insane spectacle filled boss battles, where they kept going even more bazonkers mode. But it was not enough to carry this game. And the RPG mechanics, of which there are almost none, are completely useless and just tacked on because they felt it had to be here. Combat is very fun at first, but gets stale too quickly even with new crazy abilities being added every now and then. Theres also basically no strategy in how to fight different enemies or bosses, theres no status effects or weaknesses. You just use the strongest moves you have when you can.

All in all I am extremely conflicted on this game so maybe i will have to collect my thoughts more clearly.

Music: Most of it is pretty okay, but it has some crazy standout bangers, Titan boss fight for example is a weird rap song?? 7/10 for music