(Reuploaded)

The heavens aligned and miraculously I was blessed with a switch eshop refund. I honestly can not believe how dissapointed i am in this game. I absolutely adore the visuals, the music is grand, the combat is nostalgic and engaging. All that absolutely wasted on the most sterotypical below-grade jrpg writing i could ever even imagine. Literally every single boring shitty trope i can think of was introduced in the beginning hours of the game. It even goes down to the lines the npcs will give you, i feel like ive read the story of this game before a thousand times. If youve played a fantasy rpg before, youve played this game. There is no charisma or quality. I could waste words explaining why but if youve played a japanese video game before you already know what i mean.
I talk a lot with my friend uri about how video games in particular have a lot of qualities that separate themselves from other art forms, but none of them seem to want to utilize it. Thats what this game reminds me of. Jrpgs in particular will have 100,000 words dedicated to the most disingenuous, boring (and sexist) shit you can possibly think of. Highlight on the misogyny because dear god star ocean sure didnt want to break the mold when it comes to those tropes.
Called nintendo support the second i got to a line of dialogue which implied the aunt innkeeper character was gonna give Rena a room for free so she (17 years old) could go have sex in it with a guy she met like 2 seconds ago. Real fascinating stuff. Jrpgs gotta be stopped, smells like octopath 2 in here.