This review contains spoilers
The story's played way safer compared to the previous games, which wouldn't be as much of a problem if they didn't completely botch the execution anyways. The only real interesting scenario is Savalon, because of the whole "flooded by water crystal" thing. (I think it's neat, at least - the crystals causing problems by not being where they should.) The earth crystal scenario tries to be interesting like that, at least, but the fire crystal doesn't try at all.
Gameplay suffers from inexplicably cutting out QoL features. A huge one is with the battle system - for some reason, they made the shift to a conditional turn-based format (think Final Fantasy X), but they didn't pair being able to view the turn order - they just gave vague indications of who's up next. You could argue that this is to counterbalance how it would affect Brave/Default; I'd argue that's a good reason to just sticking to traditional turn-based like the last two games.
The jobs are kinda sloppily designed. They undid the "double unlock" system for magic that the first two games had, which wouldn't be too bad if they didn't also make getting job levels way more accessible. This does not make magic good. On the contrary, they massively undertuned magic because you can, without too much effort, get -aga spells before even leaving the first area. (The job levels being easier to get thing would be nice if this wasn't almost assuredly the direct result). One of the final jobs you unlock has its schtick completely undermined by its final passive, which lets you break the damage limit. You can deal 10k damage over four turns... or you can slam 45k (generously, it's easy to get more) at once with, say, Berserker. Your call.
...I will say that I do like that specialties are actually, like, special, rather than "just" a job having an innate version of a passive they can learn normally. The integration is kinda wonky and uneven (some are very subclass-reliant, some are more focused on the class itself. some are really fucking good (tank class gets more attack the more target rate it has!), others are bottom tier crap - I'm looking at you, black mage specialty 2, or "use a different element, dipshit!"). But it's a nice concept.
Also counterattacks are dumb in this game. They're either a huge pain in the ass or absolutely nothing to worry about, depending on where you are in the game. Early on they're godawful, most of the game they're un-notable because you get a passive to dodge most of them (yes really), end game they're super fucking annoying because one of them is... Counter Any Ability: BP +1. Extra turns because you did literally anything. This makes you lean towards not letting your enemies get a turn at all, which is really easy, and I'm gonna let you in on a secret: keeping your enemies effortlessly locked down is really, really fucking boring. Status effects are absolutely criminally unused in RPGs but the way to make them usable is not making a passive that lets them have a 100% success rate, at least/especially when one of those statuses makes your enemies completely unable to move.
Like it could be fun in theory but like, almost every boss (when it's relevant) is open to some variant of it. That's boring.
Also sidequests generally suck, compared to the last two games. There's some that are fun and also worth it (not-coincidentally, they have voice acting) but most of them are just... dumb crap for shit that's not even unique.
tl;dr - there's a lot that went wrong with this game. i won't, admittedly, say it's BAD - it's serviceable enough and for most of the game it isn't really offensive. But it could've been more - and it doesn't always land on its feet for what it's trying to be.
Gameplay suffers from inexplicably cutting out QoL features. A huge one is with the battle system - for some reason, they made the shift to a conditional turn-based format (think Final Fantasy X), but they didn't pair being able to view the turn order - they just gave vague indications of who's up next. You could argue that this is to counterbalance how it would affect Brave/Default; I'd argue that's a good reason to just sticking to traditional turn-based like the last two games.
The jobs are kinda sloppily designed. They undid the "double unlock" system for magic that the first two games had, which wouldn't be too bad if they didn't also make getting job levels way more accessible. This does not make magic good. On the contrary, they massively undertuned magic because you can, without too much effort, get -aga spells before even leaving the first area. (The job levels being easier to get thing would be nice if this wasn't almost assuredly the direct result). One of the final jobs you unlock has its schtick completely undermined by its final passive, which lets you break the damage limit. You can deal 10k damage over four turns... or you can slam 45k (generously, it's easy to get more) at once with, say, Berserker. Your call.
...I will say that I do like that specialties are actually, like, special, rather than "just" a job having an innate version of a passive they can learn normally. The integration is kinda wonky and uneven (some are very subclass-reliant, some are more focused on the class itself. some are really fucking good (tank class gets more attack the more target rate it has!), others are bottom tier crap - I'm looking at you, black mage specialty 2, or "use a different element, dipshit!"). But it's a nice concept.
Also counterattacks are dumb in this game. They're either a huge pain in the ass or absolutely nothing to worry about, depending on where you are in the game. Early on they're godawful, most of the game they're un-notable because you get a passive to dodge most of them (yes really), end game they're super fucking annoying because one of them is... Counter Any Ability: BP +1. Extra turns because you did literally anything. This makes you lean towards not letting your enemies get a turn at all, which is really easy, and I'm gonna let you in on a secret: keeping your enemies effortlessly locked down is really, really fucking boring. Status effects are absolutely criminally unused in RPGs but the way to make them usable is not making a passive that lets them have a 100% success rate, at least/especially when one of those statuses makes your enemies completely unable to move.
Like it could be fun in theory but like, almost every boss (when it's relevant) is open to some variant of it. That's boring.
Also sidequests generally suck, compared to the last two games. There's some that are fun and also worth it (not-coincidentally, they have voice acting) but most of them are just... dumb crap for shit that's not even unique.
tl;dr - there's a lot that went wrong with this game. i won't, admittedly, say it's BAD - it's serviceable enough and for most of the game it isn't really offensive. But it could've been more - and it doesn't always land on its feet for what it's trying to be.