God I adore this game to bits
Theres so much absurd stuff that goes on in this game from all the futuristic cyperpunk stuff to robot sex workers to talking dogs and yet everything just feel so natural and human. The atmosphere is perfect, from the visual design to the little shopping trips you can make to the fact you can pick and choose your favorite songs to play. The conversations all feel incredibly normal and believable in a world that should be anything but. Every character has their own backstory, their own problems, their own little stories that gradually come out over the period you have them. And what maybe makes the entire game for me is that the scope of your view is heavily limited. Everything that happens in the game comes from Jill's point of view, contained in the time she scrolls through message boards in her apartment or serves clients in the bar. There are, of course, different events that happen in the city that have huge impacts on different characters, but as they do not affect Jill directly, the extent of what she knows about these events is limited to the news or what she hears from people directly, and I feel like that makes it a little easier to immerse yourself in the world. The game is just three short weeks through the eyes of a bartender with her own share of problems, but it means the world to me.

Kinda just wanted to get my thoughts in order right after finishing the game. Some of this might change later with time or DLC, idk

I love this game. It really does feel like they took the issues I had with the previous two games and made them so incredibly enjoyable. But even when thinking about what I love here, something feels off.

The main cast is the best its been so far. They're all really endearing, enjoyable characters, with the party interactions to match. No one feels out of place, I had a lot of fun getting to cross Aionios with them and see them grow throughout the story. The heroes also feel like a nice substitute for recruiting party members across the journey, but it feels like some of them suffer in their hero quests writing-wise just by the sheer number of them.

The combat is so much fun. The versatility and customization of the blade system is there without the hassle of the gacha and the blade affinity chart. There are so many options to choose from and playing from an endgame progress and understanding standpoint is just incredible.

As an explorable world, Aionios might be my favorite. Theres so many places to go, always some new area to find once you level up or get a new field skill. No area feels superficial either; it feels like everything is used for the story or for a quest of some kind. It all feels very intentional. I'm not really a big fan of the colonies though, they're alright but the established cities in the previous games were much more interesting.

Side quests also feel like they finally "got it." No more recycled dialogue for repetitive fetch quests, every quest has some story behind it, no matter how small, and it makes doing them so much less taxing. Affinity chart is back too, so you can see it grow over time when doing quests or talking to random people, and its almost addicting.

So obviously there's a lot I love about the game. So why can I not shake the feeling there's something wrong with it?

I've thought a bit about it and ultimately came to this: the game feels very stuck between wanting to tell its own, separate story, and wanting to be a sequel to 1 and 2, and the mood suffers a bit from it. Its blatantly obvious this game is a follow up to the previous two in almost every aspect, yet the story seems to shy away from that fact until the final chapter, where at that point it feels out of place. The references are far too blatant and clear for the game to pass as an independent entry, but it doesn't lean enough into those aspects for it to feel like a follow up either. I enjoy the story, but I wish it just tried to lean into one camp or the other.

It also just feels like some character details and explanations on why the world is like it is are intentionally left out for DLC story bait. Which ig in the long run is kinda whatever, just disappointing when torna felt more like a companion piece to xc2 rather than what was missing to complete it.

All in all these are just my thoughts right after finishing the game. I still have a lot of postgame stuff to do, and I want replay the story just to get an uninterrupted stream of the plot without long sidequest breaks. I also want to come back to it after playing saga/gears, since I know a lot of people see it as the culmination of Takahashi's work. All in all I think this is a fantastic game that I hope the DLC expands upon, its just right now there are things i wish it did differently.

This game takes everything I already enjoy about 2 and either fixes or does away with the parts I dont. The writing and party dynamics are up there with the best of base game, and almost none of the original's awkward "comedy" is there which makes the characters feel much more natural and real. The new combat system is so much fun, the new mechanics are great and having only one party setup makes everything feel clean and intended. I love the new UI and quality of life features so much, with things like autosave, better collection points, and a smaller menu, the game feels easier to take in and focus on. The original blade system being gone makes everything so so so much better: I dont need to keep account of anything beyond my main party, i already mentioned the battle system, and field skills feel like legitimate progress checks now instead of the mess they were in base game. Side quests are a huge step up as well; I was worried when I heard there was a sidequest barrier to make progress, but most quests are super simple and provide a lot of unique party dialogue, which made the process enjoyable. The community system is also neat, and helped the quests to feel as if they built off each other, instead of being independent events. I also wish so badly 2 had the same level of world design as this does because torna clears every other area in that game so easily. Individually the areas are amazing but on top of that they all piece together like a puzzle and makes the titan feel complete and diverse. Really the only negative thing I can think to say about this game is I wish it was longer, but for what it is the story is still really good. I really hope this level of care can be brought into games with a much larger scale as well, this was just amazing.

At its best, the writing in this game is something amazing and something I really care for. From the direction the story takes in the final chapters and the impact each party member has, the story really emphasizes the strength of individual bonds and how they can bring about great change. The climax is incredible and probably one of my favorite stretches of content in anything. As great as the story is, I wish I could feel the same about everything else in this game.
Being able to explore such massive, unique worlds is a huge draw to this series for me, which is why it makes me sad that I'm not really a fan of alrest. My guess to this feeling its that most areas feel isolated instead of different faces of one, complete world. And even then, exploring each area isn't as fun when you get a field skill pop up every few minutes that makes you waste time switching around your blades and then switching them back. And on top of it all I just don't really have the same attachment to the same areas as 1 or X either. It just makes the game a little draining sometimes when you dont really care about the amazing world the game is set in.
On the topic of field skills, I think a good word to describe how I feel about the blade system is "overwhelming." I appreciate the number of different play styles and options they give you for using blades in combat, but as the blades you get increase, looking at the blade menu for merc missions and field skills gets really daunting even with the search options. More personally as well, I already have an issue of feeling like the designs of the main party clash against each other, and the 30+ other characters you can get really do not help me feel better about that.
I think the last big thing for me is that quests have the same issue as 1 where the vast majority are just fetch quests that kinda suck. I'm glad that blade quests exist, since they're a good way of making the process more interesting and rewarding, but the entire system still needs improving when there are So Many quests you can do. Blade affinity charts also just feel like boring padding when powering up your characters is locked behind more random monster killing or item collecting or something. Maybe my least favorite change from the previous 2 games is the removal of the classic affinity chart, because even if quests are a slog, watching that chart gradually fill up and expand the world feels so good, and it feels like some continuity is missing with that gone.
Even though I just ranted about a lot of stuff in this game, I should say that I still think the game is great. The parts that I dislike just stick out enough for me to wish I could love this game as much as I've seen other people I know have. I'm still super excited for the future of the series, though; I've played a bit of torna and seen a lot of xc3 stuff at the time of writing this, and both games look like they take my favorite parts of this game and do away with the biggest problems I have. I hope that someday too I'll be able to come back to this game again and feel better on it as well.

the time mechanic and the loops are such an amazing thing even after all this time because it really makes termina feel alive, giving more flavor to the usual sidequests but also letting you see how the world changes during each of the three days, and how doing things on each loop can cause changes, large or small. You can see how everyone reacts to the coming of the moon and how those thoughts change over time. It makes an already great journey really stand out as unique from the rest of the series