I was really hot and cold on this game for like the first 30 hours. I think this game has one of the worst openings to a game I've played in recent memory. It's a lot of information overload with loads of tutorials, text to read, minigames to learn. Assuming you're doing the open world content, the first 15 hours of the game are basically just the Nibelheim flashback and then pulling Chadley out of your ass every 5 minutes. I really hate Chadley too, there's nothing necessarily wrong with the character, but I lost track of how many times I had to stop and pull him out of my ass just for him to say the most useless thing that could have easily been ambient dialogue. Most of the open world content is very uninteresting as well, but I ended up doing a lot of it because I felt it was the best time to experiment with different materia and master weapon skills.
Queensblood was initially a fun idea to me, but got old REALLY quickly once I got to a level of "difficulty" where the computer just counters your every play. All you need to do is pass your first turn and do the same thing to the cpu, then the game becomes a joke. Once I realized that I lost all interest in it. It's definitely no Gwent. The minigames as a whole were really hit or miss. I liked some of them like Chocobo racing, but a startling amount of minigames were just "learn these mechanics and do this perfectly, otherwise you don't win, and by the way you won't progress either"...
LOOKING AT YOU FUCKING GEARS AND GAMBITS. But I guess I didn't need to do Gears and Gambits, because the payoff ended up being a secret boss fight that requires immense grinding long after you've finished the game to even stand a chance against, which was also disappointing. Moogle hearding was also really miserable and you barely get anything of value from it. Man, the more I think about it, I just did not like many of the minigames at all lol.
I know I've been talking a lot of shit about this game, but despite all of that I still think it is a REALLY good RPG. The parts here that are traditional RPG are really good. The game really clicked for me around the Gongaga/Cosmo Canyon region. Gongaga was a pain in the ass to navigate, but Cosmo Canyon was the total opposite and really fun to explore. The main story beats are all gorgeously animated, beautifully scored, even if I have no idea what is going on with the story. Synergy abilities and materia combinations made it fun to try out different strategies. Bosses and summons were really fun to fight.
I only wish this game was just a little bit harder. I'm kind of sick of games locking their hard modes behind game completion... Like really sick of it. FFXVI did this too, which was another game that could have benefited from some difficulty. But honestly, higher difficulty in these kinds of games usually just means more health, less damage.
Great game though, I'm torn between giving it a genuine 4.5/5 and saying that it's slightly overrated at a 4, but I enjoyed my time with it enough that I think it's a 4.5 for me.