ambitious often to a fault, is missing a lot of quality of life features present in more modern entires, can be a bit of a chore at times due to map size and the characterisation of its cast is frequently kind of lacking
that being said, the way this game makes its gameplay and story work in tandem with each other and the many other things it did to push the series forward makes me respect it a lot even if it doesn't always succeed at what it's trying to do, and I think overall the story is not half bad especially considering all the hardware limitations that made the game rely on exposition a little too much sometimes
can't disagree with people who say that this deserves a remake