The spectacle in this game is very very good, and the combat is fun, though it does begin to wear out it's welcome by the end of the game. Less so than most games though. There's also some great production going on, the voice acting is mostly very good.
That said, the pacing is really terrible, mostly because the side quests are nearly all just really boring garbage. You can really see the final fantasy 14 roots, the structure of the game and side quests feels pretty similar even if the combat is completely different.
The main story in this game is generally just ok, but certain aspects do not work.
Mostly, the bearers. The way the bearers are handled does not really make any sense to me. It's implied that in most cases parents just give up their kids to become slaves and hate them if they find out they have magic? Like I understand you could say people in real life will do that sometimes if they have lgbtq+ children, they can basically disown them in some cases, which is a terrible thing, but in this game the same people who follow a king who has special magic powers disown their own children who have normal magic powers? And these magic people, who should be more powerful than their masters, never try to rise up against them? I guess you could argue we're just not shown it because it's not relevant, but I'd still say the way the game handles their slave class largely feels unrealistic. Of course I agree with the thesis of this game that people should be allowed to live on their own terms, have freedom, but it doesn't meaningfully address why people will hate others and oppress them so much. It feels like they're using a really dark part of some humans' natural inclination to hate what's different and exploit others, but they're not really talking about it realistically or saying anything about why it happens and not really using it for any reason other than to say it's bad. There's just no depth at all to any of the themes in this story. And it almost feels like they knew they're not handling it well, because they chose not to include black people anywhere in this game, they took the cowards way out and completely ignored the racial aspect of real life slavery, rather than try to say something meaningful anywhere in their game.
Overall it's a fun game but really poorly paced and has a questionable story
That said, the pacing is really terrible, mostly because the side quests are nearly all just really boring garbage. You can really see the final fantasy 14 roots, the structure of the game and side quests feels pretty similar even if the combat is completely different.
The main story in this game is generally just ok, but certain aspects do not work.
Mostly, the bearers. The way the bearers are handled does not really make any sense to me. It's implied that in most cases parents just give up their kids to become slaves and hate them if they find out they have magic? Like I understand you could say people in real life will do that sometimes if they have lgbtq+ children, they can basically disown them in some cases, which is a terrible thing, but in this game the same people who follow a king who has special magic powers disown their own children who have normal magic powers? And these magic people, who should be more powerful than their masters, never try to rise up against them? I guess you could argue we're just not shown it because it's not relevant, but I'd still say the way the game handles their slave class largely feels unrealistic. Of course I agree with the thesis of this game that people should be allowed to live on their own terms, have freedom, but it doesn't meaningfully address why people will hate others and oppress them so much. It feels like they're using a really dark part of some humans' natural inclination to hate what's different and exploit others, but they're not really talking about it realistically or saying anything about why it happens and not really using it for any reason other than to say it's bad. There's just no depth at all to any of the themes in this story. And it almost feels like they knew they're not handling it well, because they chose not to include black people anywhere in this game, they took the cowards way out and completely ignored the racial aspect of real life slavery, rather than try to say something meaningful anywhere in their game.
Overall it's a fun game but really poorly paced and has a questionable story