I didn't play that much of this so I'm not gonna rate it, but I don't really wanna continue this because it's painfully.... generic in almost every fashion

I did think the gameplay was cool at first but then I realised that
1) It's painfully easy
2) The game gives you almost complete access to all the parts of combat that actually matter right at the start of the game, leaving no real sense of progression to be had which I feel is pretty necessary with a game that is trying to be somewhat metroidvania-like

Verdict: the game is fine I just don't feel any desire to spend a few more hours playing it to finish it, as short as it is

The -0.5 stars is for the PC port performance, even on version 1.04 it's very shoddy at times but at least it's playable now!

That being said, what the fuck man
I'm genuinely looking for things to complain about with this game
The job system is fantastic, the combat is fantastic, the story wasn't anything special at first but it eventually became raw as fuck. Man.

What a game

I feel as though this game has a similar problem to DS2 wherein it tries to create difficulty artificially which is annoying, but WOULD be fine if the recycled mini dungeons/bosses and general side content you can do to gain more power was good. Heck, if I could actively avoid doing the side content at all I absolutely would because it is BY FAR the game's weakest asset. It's a shame because FromSoft is typically good at giving you methods to become more powerful and there's definitely more of them in this game than ever before, but it feels spread thin because of all of the bland, dull recycled content.

Moreover, I found that the lategame feels really 'disjointed', so to speak, as in progression from the lategame until the end feels less natural than the rest of the game. It feels like things just... happen, and a lot of the lategame bosses are not that great (with exceptions, of course). On the whole I feel like the lategame feels rushed and not very well balanced compared to the rest of the game and that honestly leaves a really sour taste in my mouth because I was enjoying the game despite the glaring flaws before that.

Verdict: I'll just go back to Dark Souls III because it's a more consistently fun experience, at least for me

the base combat is awesome, but everything around it is genuinely awful, i.e. loot, how repetitive the game gets quickly and most importantly the horrid level design

no seriously this is even worse levels of "i just wanna make you suffer" than dark souls 2

the PC optimisation is..... questionable as well, but at least it's not as bad as Stranger of Paradise (that is to say, it's playable)

The first thing I will ever, wholly unironically, give a 5/5

Probably the single most enjoyable piece of fiction I've ever witnessed

It was all worth it, all the 370 - 380 or so hours that came before it (I played a new job each expac) and the
60 or so hours this expac took to beat
Damn.

UPDATE:
6.1 through 6.4 fucking sucked this game is ass