Update: replayed the game again and lowered my score from a 5/10 to a 2/10. After learning about how I'm actually supposed to play the game, I encountered a new problem in which the game is now repetitive and boring. So all the positive things I had to say about some of the boss fights are retroactively nullified. Almost everything about the game is a regression from the first two games. Story sucks, gameplay sucks, the UI is somehow worse than the Wii game, the objective marker doesn't actually tell you how to get where you're supposed to go and is somehow worse than the objective arrow from the first game on the Wii, the world does not feel anywhere near as grand as the Bionis and Mechonis in the first game or Mira in X, I'd make the argument that the art direction in general is not as good as X and definitely not as good as the Definitive Edition of the first game, the character designs are extremely Incohesive with Torna along with a bunch of rare blades feeling like they belong in different games (reminder that Pyra and Malos are supposed to be siblings), the game resorts to extremely pandering bullshit even in scenes that are supposed to be serious, and locking story content behind a gacha system is such a horrible idea I hope that whoever at Monolith Soft came up with that got fired. The only things I enjoy about this game are the music, the world being kinda fun to explore, some of the designs of the rare blades and I guess Torna even though they all feel like they belong in different games, and Nia, who is really bogged down by ending up orbiting around Rex's dick like Pyra and Mythra along with her ears being backwards, that's such a stupid design decision, but these do not carry a game that is fundamentally bad in almost every other way. I dropped the game after getting Poppi QT. The point in which I should've dropped the game was during that stupid filler arc about Gormotti orphans trying to stop a rag-tag group of bandits from attacking the most militarized city of Gormott so they can introduce Roc. To this day I have no idea how this game has the fanfare that it gets. I feel like I've played a completely different game.