It is a shame what has happened to a once-beloved franchise.

I blame SquareEnix for failing to provide Tri Ace with an adequate budge to actually make what could be considered a triple A game, but I also blame Tri Ace for failing to work within their own constraints and for seemingly becoming the Sonic Team of the JRPG developers.

Lets start with the visuals. The visuals are a marked downgrade from the last game in the series. The visuals look akin to a PS3 launch title from 2006.

The trailers give off Xenoblade vibes, but in-game, you realize that the game world is incredibly small, consisting of a handful of outdoor zones and about 4 towns. One town is literally a giant square room with vendors just standing around.

Just like in the last game, you blow through most all of the zones in the few handful of hours and then it's ping-ponging back and forth to places you've already visited.

In the last half of the game, you do go to space, but it's just dungeon --> dungeon --> dungeon then back to the planet for the final boss.

Character progression and combat is the worst in the franchise. Character's progress through the worst skilltree I have ever seen in a game. It's 100 nodes of +2% attack, +2%, defense, +2% attack, +3% HP, etc. Every now and then you unlock a passive ability or an attack to use in a combo.

You can upgrade your skills, but you upgrading skills takes the same resource as the skill tree, so do you upgrade skills or work towards getting new ones?

combat is pressing L1 then yeeting yourself towards an enemy using your Doma then pressing square until you win. The camera can't quite keep up and spazzes out like it's on crack.

Party member AI is a complete liability, especially in the late game where bosses will just one-shot AI characters because they can't be bothered to move away from AOE or just stand in the same spot while getting pounded by the bosses.