The weakest element is easily its story. Cygames knew they had to appeal to both new players and mobile game players, and then made some wack choices that feels satisfying to neither.

I feel like this would have been less a problem had the third act not felt so haphazard. The first two-thirds feel nice and breezy even if it isn't aiming to be deep, but the finale couldn't even do that well. I think they were aiming for something similar to the original game's first arc where Freesia and Akasha led into the Black Knight where both had an equal claim as to main antagonist and worthy final boss. but like, those two had much different emotional conflicts and stakes that gave them interesting heft. In theory, we're supposed to get that from Lilith and Id, but in execution, they both get saddled with "the world will explode!!!!!" stakes and it kinda muddies things.

The final boss sequence with Id and then becoming an official crew member is a decent conclusion to his character arc as is. I liked his earnest sincerity at trying to apologize to them, him overcoming his indoctrination out of sincere affection for the first human connection he's ever made in ages, learning that others shouldn't decide your fate, and the world being destroyed would make people sad :<. It's fine stuff for the game's sincere having bonds with people is pretty cool, but there's a consistent refrain in my mind of "man I know they could do better". There's the caveat of we can't really have many internal monologues, which probably made Orologia/Sandalphon/Seox/Eustace/insert your fave here insanely popular, but at the same time, there's like a failure to answer basic stuff like wait where are these church guys based if 4 out of 6 of these islands in the Skydom fucking hate them.

Rolan is the other big end of the game the devs seem to have bet hard on, and on that, I'm glad to say they succeeded at least. It's not particularly novel but it is interesting to see how the dorky church guy should be reevaluated on account of the human experimentation and society building. His growing support for the crew, conflict with Lilith, zeal to save the world, and sacrifice ultimately for two kids is neat.

Finally, Fate Episodes: An interesting conceit to avoid info dumping, but also very mixed. actually this is probably because I've done like half of them by this point and they're all just "Here's my backstory. Wow somehow I've been dragged into a situation that reminds me of my backstory! What a coinkydink!!"

Gameplay is 95% solid. The remaining 5% are the invisible chests, which are, and I cannot emphasize this enough, fucking garbage. How Cygames expected this to make any sort of sense when they forgot the variety in cast size and therefore hitbox for collecting randomly strewn gems that require some very precise jump timing is beyond me. The sheer variety in character gameplay styles means every player is probably going to find someone you like and feel comfortable maining (Rackam and Io nuking everyone from afar ftw). The enemy and boss variety is equally fantastic where it never feels like they ran out of interesting ideas for enemy design or gimmicks all the way to the end. I never felt like the shifts in gameplay were particularly bad or unneeded. Relink solidly lived up to what Cygames promised as a game.

This game looks ridiculously pretty and the legion of artists hired for this sure backs up that notion! It's actually kinda insane Cygames isn't using this engine or art direction for more console games because holy shit I would kill for Akihiko Yoshida's art style to be translated into this. This is the only time I've ever felt like wow maybe someone could make an HD Vagrant Story remake if they tried. Most places look uniformly great with only night settings as my major complaint and being able to pick things out in the heat of battle is very well done as I never lost my bearings.

Played with the English dub so I could listen to the gameplay banter and I think it's mostly solid. Lilith's VA does a lot to make her feel at least convincingly charismatic as a villain, Id's VA sells the actually a lot younger than you'd think he is twist with shift in his voice well, and most of the people already picked up from the anime/Versus acquit themselves well (Cagliostro, Vane, and Io are who I liked the most out of the playable roster).

Music-wise, I have nothing but praise. Tsutomu Narita is Uematsu's protege for a reason and it was worth the two year fallow period in the mobile game. If I had to pick five highlights, they'd probably be Vulkan Bolla, Divine Revelation (Id's second phase theme), Seedhollow Castle, End of Ragnarok (Bahamut Versa theme), and Good Morning, Good Night (the ending song).

To go back to my feeling of "man I know they could do better", it's a frustration that they were pretty close to acing it but faceplanted at the last hour. it's a lot of solid parts and ideas but they didn't quite cohere into a whole where I would say it's for sure great. There's at least still two story expansions and three characters to look forward, so there's that. Not really going to save the structural problems but it's at least a few extra desserts at the tail end. I hope they figured out where Relink didn't work for future console games because it's a solid foundation gameplay-wise and I want the story engagement to match the same satisfaction I had playing it.