I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY ABOUT THIS!!!

EVERYTHING. IS. SO. SLOW.:

The pace of the game is SLOW, some of the (unskippable) dialogues are TERRIBLY dragged out and there are weird pauses that make you wonder "Is there a problem with my game??", I absolutely HATED the fact that EVERYTHING needed an end/reward screen. Oh, you've just beaten a pack of 5 random mobs that took you 2 seconds to defeat for a boring side quest? Here is a screen that's gonna take 15-20 seconds to skip and that's just useless information that could've been displayed in real time on the somewhat empty UI. Now imagine that happening with EVERY. MINOR. ACHIEVEMENT. So on and so forth. HOWEVER, as soon as you accept that fact, the game becomes much more enjoyable in my opinion. PLEASE DO NOT DROP THE GAME BEFORE THE END OF ACT 1 IT GETS BETTER I PROMISE!

The side quests:

It's hard for a game to make good side quest content, especially when there's so many of them, but it's very much possible. I think that random fetch quests should not be a thing in this kind of game and I would much rather have like 10-20 over-arching side quests that were longer and in multiple parts for character development rather than maybe 5-6 interesting ones out of SEVENTY SIX (76!!)... After like 7-8 side quests where I tried to get involved in the plot, I basically started skipping through all of their uselessly long dialogues and I was all the better for it.
While on the topic of side quests (minor spoiler warning), I absolutely HATED how they dropped like 8 of them at once just before the final boss like "oopsy doopsy, let us not have unfinished character arcs" and once you think you're done with one you get EVEN MORE of them. I didn't count exactly but I think there were 15 of them at the end?? Way to make the end of a somewhat cool finale feel like a slog. Also sucks that those were the most interesting ones story-wise but I just didn't have the patience to go through them because I just wanted to be done with the game so that it doesn't end in my backlog as I'm really close to finishing it...

Rookie mistakes from such an established IP is unforgivable:

Bit of a personal rant here but I think that when a weapon (Ragnarok) is a core part of one aspect of your gameplay (don't know the name in English but the elite monster hunt thingy) maybe DON'T GIVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SELL SAID WEAPON... It is obviously my fault for having done that but, as someone who plays a TON of games, I go by the principle "if I can sell it, it means it's either unimportant or that I can rebuy it if I made a mistake"... SO TELL ME WHY AFTER THE 16TH INSTALLMENT OF YOUR FRANCHISE YOU DIDN'T PUT A "REBUY" OPTION OR MADE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO SELL AN IMPORTANT SWORD?? I know it's possible because the Onion Sword is still in my inventory so WHYYYYYY?? I am of course also mad at myself but that's such a basic thing to do and it's BAFFLING to me that they didn't think of that, especially since (from what I've gathered) it's really important for NG+ stuff... It's a small detail but at 35+ hours in and when you want to be done with the game, it kinda kills the mood of it all...



Ok, so... I may be complaining a lot but I actually thoroughly enjoyed this game despite its flaws. It's a typical case of "the highs are super high but the lows are so damn low too". Despite all of its flaws, I still had a good time playing the game 90% of the time and I was most often looking forward to go back to the game rather than feeling like I "needed" to get back to it. (SPOILER) Also the "first kiss" scene with them being completely butt-naked out of nowhere was not what I expected but it's still one of the most touching moment I've witnessed in my video game history.

Final words: if I could rate it out of 20, I would probably give it 13. Not too high because the flaws are too important and present for me to say "I had a very enjoyable experience" but rating it any lower would be hypocritical of me because, at the end of the day, I DID have an enjoyable time.