I don't get the critical acclaim, I really don't. This must be how people feel when they just don't gel with a popular game.

I still had a lot of fun with this game. The visuals are absolutely stunning, the music is amazing, and the characters are endlessly charming. But, this game fails as an RPG. The combat while having some depth just isn't that good and your tools end up being very limited. The game is incredibly linear, and honestly I'm not sure how on board I am with the fact this only equates to the first ten hours of the original. No overworld, bland, formulaic side quests, I couldn't experiment with the combat system because the game would not let me, it wanted to keep moving to each linear story beat without letting me just take in it's world. How great would this be if you could actually explore? The level cap is 50 but you really only need to be at about 30 for the "final boss". I'm even on board with the weird changes to the central narrative from the original! It's different! I think a lot of my gripes come from the fact this is a "Part 1" kind of game. I'll probably go into the next parts, but still, this installment just didn't land for me.

Style over substance, but not in the fun way.