It’s pretty good, but not excellent. Characters and presentation are for sure the best parts of the game, although I think the combat does not go as deep as I would like it to.
I think the stagger system is the main thing that keeps the game from feeling as expressive as other character action games. Compressing the max damage output you can have into just that small stagger window means you’re simply not doing as much cool shit during the rest of a fight.
Another (commonly stated) criticism is that a lot of the side quests are fairly bog-standard. However, I think they are effectively used to create a bedrock of nice and memorable NPCs within the hub town, giving most of them a nice character arc by the end of the game (FF14 also pulls this same thing over time, too, and I do like it there).
I think the stagger system is the main thing that keeps the game from feeling as expressive as other character action games. Compressing the max damage output you can have into just that small stagger window means you’re simply not doing as much cool shit during the rest of a fight.
Another (commonly stated) criticism is that a lot of the side quests are fairly bog-standard. However, I think they are effectively used to create a bedrock of nice and memorable NPCs within the hub town, giving most of them a nice character arc by the end of the game (FF14 also pulls this same thing over time, too, and I do like it there).