After about 10-15 hours I had to shelve this one. I had heard a ton about this series and love JRPGs in general, but this bounced off me very hard very quickly.

-The game seems to have a sort of subtle disdain for series newcomers. Unlike JRPGs that do this right, gameplay systems are introduced in a very haphazard, incomplete way and it's impossible to tell which are worth paying attention to and which aren't.

-The story and world didn't draw me in at all. The game tries to tell me why I should care about this school full of rich brats, but it never SHOWS me. Again, it gives off a feeling that I missed some important backstory or that the game is just talking past me.

-It straight-up looks like a 3DS game. I'm fine with outdated/downscaled graphics but when I buy a $60 MSRP game in 2019 I expect it to look way better than this.

-The battle system just doesn't work for me. Perma-death isn't implemented well whatsoever - you are better off overextending yourself with thenmain protagonist/house leader than any of your units which comes off as totally ass-backwards. There is zero story impact when a unit dies - you wouldn't even know a character died permanently if you happened to miss that in the tutorial. There's still way too much of a focus on RNG here for a game that's supposed to be "tactical" and features perma-death. And ultimately there doesn't seem to be much flexibility with how to approach certain maps on harder difficulties.

It's not all bad: I tolerated the monastery portions/side quests better than others might have, but it's still hard to get through knowing how much I don't enjoy the rest of the game. I also really like the music that plays in the monastery. And some of the characters I was genuinely interested in getting to know better.

This is one of the best video games I have ever played. It takes a great story (granted one with ups and downs), a beautiful world, lovable characters, and an engaging fast-paced turn-based combat system, and manages to combine it all into a cohesive, immersive experience. It also makes you feel cool while playing it, as the aesthetic and music are on point.

The 100-150 hours it will take to complete the game may scare some people off, but by the end I was wishing I had another 100-150 hours to spend with it.