Very good strategic gameplay. Decent if admittedly lackluster story. (I think it's fine but I get that other people might be wanting.)
I really like how bosses are handled in this game. Most map objectives are "defeat boss", which I liked in Tactics Ogre and I liked here as well. Bosses rooted in one place are also the exception rather than the norm, which I like as a way of making you always be wary of them. Also helping is the "revival stone", mechanic - basically the bosses having however many equally-long health bars. It sounds like it has the potential to be annoying but I can appreciate the staying power it gives the bosses - killing them in one full turn is still possible, but you'll definitely need multiple units for it and it's more of a commitment. And it feels really satisfying when you manage to deplete all of their health bars in one turn; each health bar being normal-sized helps. I'd say I only really got annoyed with revival stones when there were multiple units on the field with them, moreso when they otherwise were generic, but those moments are super rare, mercifully.
I think the main weakness of the gameplay is the unit building - specifically, how restrictive it is. You get exactly two slots for skills of your choice - and (at least before version 1.3) you had extremely limited SP to purchase skills with, leading to easy decision paralysis. Another potential annoyance is that there are some unique and potentially useful skills on bond rings, but using them means that you have to completely give up the generally-more-useful engage rings. Understandable, maybe, but still kind of restrictive for my tastes. (Also class skills kinda suck, though I do appreciate how the "activation skills" - things like Luna and Ignis - are restricted to special classes. Makes them feel fancier and exclusive like they used to... but they also don't have cool animations...)
Finally, I want to talk about the story. It exists. It's not the very best story, and I can see why it would be easy to be disappointed with it after Three Houses, which at the very least tried to be more ambitious with it (and I think is generally accepted to have been more successful with it than, say, Fates). There are still, however, pieces of the story that I liked a lot - some of them are, admittedly, most likely because they hit a weak point for me, but I really like the villain. Without getting into spoilers, I think he evokes some more unique emotions. He commits the cardinal sin of "you only learn about him five seconds before you punch his face in" but in spite of that those five seconds make him fairly memorable, I think! It's not a masterpiece by any means but I still genuinely think it was enjoyable enough to not make me want to skip through every story scene just to get to gameplay faster.
I really like how bosses are handled in this game. Most map objectives are "defeat boss", which I liked in Tactics Ogre and I liked here as well. Bosses rooted in one place are also the exception rather than the norm, which I like as a way of making you always be wary of them. Also helping is the "revival stone", mechanic - basically the bosses having however many equally-long health bars. It sounds like it has the potential to be annoying but I can appreciate the staying power it gives the bosses - killing them in one full turn is still possible, but you'll definitely need multiple units for it and it's more of a commitment. And it feels really satisfying when you manage to deplete all of their health bars in one turn; each health bar being normal-sized helps. I'd say I only really got annoyed with revival stones when there were multiple units on the field with them, moreso when they otherwise were generic, but those moments are super rare, mercifully.
I think the main weakness of the gameplay is the unit building - specifically, how restrictive it is. You get exactly two slots for skills of your choice - and (at least before version 1.3) you had extremely limited SP to purchase skills with, leading to easy decision paralysis. Another potential annoyance is that there are some unique and potentially useful skills on bond rings, but using them means that you have to completely give up the generally-more-useful engage rings. Understandable, maybe, but still kind of restrictive for my tastes. (Also class skills kinda suck, though I do appreciate how the "activation skills" - things like Luna and Ignis - are restricted to special classes. Makes them feel fancier and exclusive like they used to... but they also don't have cool animations...)
Finally, I want to talk about the story. It exists. It's not the very best story, and I can see why it would be easy to be disappointed with it after Three Houses, which at the very least tried to be more ambitious with it (and I think is generally accepted to have been more successful with it than, say, Fates). There are still, however, pieces of the story that I liked a lot - some of them are, admittedly, most likely because they hit a weak point for me, but I really like the villain. Without getting into spoilers, I think he evokes some more unique emotions. He commits the cardinal sin of "you only learn about him five seconds before you punch his face in" but in spite of that those five seconds make him fairly memorable, I think! It's not a masterpiece by any means but I still genuinely think it was enjoyable enough to not make me want to skip through every story scene just to get to gameplay faster.