This game is weird.

It's not boring, but it makes changes that are very impactful. Not necessarily for the better.

Shoot Chains were added, allowing you to, with certain moves, power up a shot with another shot. But it was bugged here to almost always result in a penalty. Hissatsu Tactics were added, which were divisive because they halt the moment to moment action and also can be annoying to deal with in a way that can turn the tides but not in a way that's fun for...either player, really. The change to GP/Stamina was also honestly very sudden, making it so that your characters get tired out way faster in this one. I imagine the idea was to make it so that players switched out their characters more often, but TP already endorsed that sort of play so it was honestly just an odd change. Also the tournament mode with its RNG rewards and incredibly easy teams.

That said, it has all the teams and moves from the previous games and then some, there's a lot of content, and it has some of the best music in the trilogy. Definitely worth playing, at least.

In terms of gameplay this is probably the best of the trilogy, though that's to be expected. In terms of the story, i'm not very sure how I feel about it. It's good y'know, but I feel like IE2 had a lot more emotional payoffs, and a lil deeper at that. Though I won't deny that winning the FFI was hype as hell and it sure made me crack a whole smile, the ending was just kinda there. Instead of a lotta cool subplots converging like they did towards the end of IE2 here they just kinda kill off a bunch of them beforehand in exchange for a cleaner, fair one to one match type of ending which is awesome but i still kinda prefer how IE2 did it. Biggest gripe I have with it is Ogre Team i mean when those mfs pop up in the middle of the story they're overleveled as shit they're one hell of an artificial roadblock and made me drop the game for a while. In the end i just kinda had to grind XP which wasn't really hard but it sure wasn't all that fun. I really hate those aspects of RPGs which is why I don't usually play them much. Call me a pussy if you want (you're right)

why does the 3DS game from 2010 have gacha mechanics i fucking hate this shit