Story fairly heavily focused on war and destruction with side quests that portray people and cities trying to survive and create a new life after the destruction of their cities and people, people trying to escape destruction or being made into soldiers, and often more tragic centered character arcs about finding and coming to terms with your place in the world and duties given or accepted. Vivi struggles with finding out that he and others like him were created for war and a desire to find his place in the world, Steiner dealing with his desire to go against his queen and oath as a night to follow a path he believes in, Freya continuing to embody the heroic idea of a knight while losing almost everything and everyone she cares about over the course of the game. The often more tragic tone, frequent loss of life and destruction, and the mention of lasting effects and hardships caused over the course of the game is really a nice change when compared to a lot of popular JRPG series where practically no one dies and there is no consequences for anything. Vivi is really the standout character, getting the best moments, getting the most frequent time in the spotlight throughout the entire game, even the ending, and influencing and being influenced by other party members more than anyone else.
Does a better job of making cities feel more alive and like they have a larger scale than most modern JRPGs that seem to want to do no more than put four buildings, a weapon shop, and an inn as a major landmark. Even though you can't go everywhere you can see the other streets, the detailed background of other locations, and NPCs that walk between the different sections. Dungeons and towns are small compared to a lot of games but look good, unique, and have a lot of detail put into them. An excellent soundtrack. Main theme, character themes, town themes. A lot of good music throughout the game.
Ability system that has you equipping items with skills set to them that are then learnable by certain characters at different AP values, with AP being earned in battles along with XP. The system is better than 8's junctions but is really just busywork that should be tied to levels, it's made worse by non active party members gaining no experience or AP and the game not even allowing you to swap items with character that are with you but not in the active group. It doesn't help that the description of some of the abilities is nonsensical. The trance system both poorly handled and just kind of boring. Characters build up a meter that puts them into a temporary more powerful mode but you have no control of when it is used, and some of the characters just have dull trance modes where they might just get to cast spells twice or just do more damage instead of doing anything more unique. The character model also changes in more often just an odd way. There are a lot of terrible side activities, one of the worst and most time consuming I've seen in a JRPG being needed to get some of the better equipment in the game or to find certain enemies
Combat is mostly typical serviceable JRPG fare, most Final Fantasy games rarely giving you the options to do anything that interesting or enemies that provide much of a challenge. What I didn't like about this one is that it is very heavily based around equipping items and abilities that you have learned that will allow you to ignore the status elements enemies inflict that the game tends to go overboard with and tends to use as the only source of challenge. So it just becomes remembering what enemies use or dying to them and then going through the menus to move more stuff around that you probably are already doing to keep new equipment on everyone to keep learning more abilities that it also wants you to keep switching because of the low number of points you get to spend to equip them.
Some of the party just isn't that interesting or doesn't get enough time and many of the characters just have dull or almost useless abilities. Zidane's main thing is to attempt to steal from enemies, Vivi has a mostly useless focus ability that slightly increases his damage, Garnet and Eiko are basically the same but with different summons and Eiko typically just being better, Amarant can throw unequipped weapons and items which is probably one of the worst abilities I can think of, you need to have Quina constantly eating new enemies to gain abilities their abilities, and Steiner can do magic sword attacks which can be very nice but if you don't have Vivi in the party with him he just loses that whole ability.
Quina is mostly just comic relief, even only getting a more important character moment in a hidden scene with Vivi. Eiko joins late and a lot of her moments seem rushed but she gets some good moments and is one of the few child characters to join you in an RPG that isn't constantly annoying. Amarant is probably one of the least important playable characters I've seen in a JRPG, both joining very late and with no previous moments in the plot and just acting somewhat like the early moments of protagonists of the previous Final Fantasy games as he tries to understand Zidane's more carefree and helpful behavior. Even in other games the late joining character tends to have moments throughout the earlier story. It would have been nice to have Beatrix or even Blank join you over him. Amarant would probably play off Freya well but neither character gets much time for themselves in general, Freya is basically done having any important role in the game in the early moments of disk 2 and they have even less time together. Zidane has some very good moments but his whole backstory is basically done in short rushed through segment that comes near the very end of the game, and that whole plot line and connected characters ends up not being very interesting due to how little time you spend in it and because a similar plot has been used in multiple other games at this point.
Lower quality than it should be due to being a port of the Android/iOS update of the PS game. Updates and Moguri Mod vastly improve making it the best version due to quality of life updates (a mode to speed the game up, give steal 100% success rate, activate trance mode, turn encounters off, faster battle loads), though there can be issues with the screen showing too much in cutscenes (models waiting outside of what would be the normal picture to walk in or out).
The overall game tends to go from being really good up until about disk 3, and then it mostly just becomes ok. As more uninteresting and rushed plot moments come into play, rapid dull boss fights, and less moments for the supporting cast as you fly to more hidden locations.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1358370500808900608
Does a better job of making cities feel more alive and like they have a larger scale than most modern JRPGs that seem to want to do no more than put four buildings, a weapon shop, and an inn as a major landmark. Even though you can't go everywhere you can see the other streets, the detailed background of other locations, and NPCs that walk between the different sections. Dungeons and towns are small compared to a lot of games but look good, unique, and have a lot of detail put into them. An excellent soundtrack. Main theme, character themes, town themes. A lot of good music throughout the game.
Ability system that has you equipping items with skills set to them that are then learnable by certain characters at different AP values, with AP being earned in battles along with XP. The system is better than 8's junctions but is really just busywork that should be tied to levels, it's made worse by non active party members gaining no experience or AP and the game not even allowing you to swap items with character that are with you but not in the active group. It doesn't help that the description of some of the abilities is nonsensical. The trance system both poorly handled and just kind of boring. Characters build up a meter that puts them into a temporary more powerful mode but you have no control of when it is used, and some of the characters just have dull trance modes where they might just get to cast spells twice or just do more damage instead of doing anything more unique. The character model also changes in more often just an odd way. There are a lot of terrible side activities, one of the worst and most time consuming I've seen in a JRPG being needed to get some of the better equipment in the game or to find certain enemies
Combat is mostly typical serviceable JRPG fare, most Final Fantasy games rarely giving you the options to do anything that interesting or enemies that provide much of a challenge. What I didn't like about this one is that it is very heavily based around equipping items and abilities that you have learned that will allow you to ignore the status elements enemies inflict that the game tends to go overboard with and tends to use as the only source of challenge. So it just becomes remembering what enemies use or dying to them and then going through the menus to move more stuff around that you probably are already doing to keep new equipment on everyone to keep learning more abilities that it also wants you to keep switching because of the low number of points you get to spend to equip them.
Some of the party just isn't that interesting or doesn't get enough time and many of the characters just have dull or almost useless abilities. Zidane's main thing is to attempt to steal from enemies, Vivi has a mostly useless focus ability that slightly increases his damage, Garnet and Eiko are basically the same but with different summons and Eiko typically just being better, Amarant can throw unequipped weapons and items which is probably one of the worst abilities I can think of, you need to have Quina constantly eating new enemies to gain abilities their abilities, and Steiner can do magic sword attacks which can be very nice but if you don't have Vivi in the party with him he just loses that whole ability.
Quina is mostly just comic relief, even only getting a more important character moment in a hidden scene with Vivi. Eiko joins late and a lot of her moments seem rushed but she gets some good moments and is one of the few child characters to join you in an RPG that isn't constantly annoying. Amarant is probably one of the least important playable characters I've seen in a JRPG, both joining very late and with no previous moments in the plot and just acting somewhat like the early moments of protagonists of the previous Final Fantasy games as he tries to understand Zidane's more carefree and helpful behavior. Even in other games the late joining character tends to have moments throughout the earlier story. It would have been nice to have Beatrix or even Blank join you over him. Amarant would probably play off Freya well but neither character gets much time for themselves in general, Freya is basically done having any important role in the game in the early moments of disk 2 and they have even less time together. Zidane has some very good moments but his whole backstory is basically done in short rushed through segment that comes near the very end of the game, and that whole plot line and connected characters ends up not being very interesting due to how little time you spend in it and because a similar plot has been used in multiple other games at this point.
Lower quality than it should be due to being a port of the Android/iOS update of the PS game. Updates and Moguri Mod vastly improve making it the best version due to quality of life updates (a mode to speed the game up, give steal 100% success rate, activate trance mode, turn encounters off, faster battle loads), though there can be issues with the screen showing too much in cutscenes (models waiting outside of what would be the normal picture to walk in or out).
The overall game tends to go from being really good up until about disk 3, and then it mostly just becomes ok. As more uninteresting and rushed plot moments come into play, rapid dull boss fights, and less moments for the supporting cast as you fly to more hidden locations.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1358370500808900608