I have mixed feelings.

It is unarguably a beautiful game that continued to astound me to the very end. The act of riding around on horseback to discover a beautiful serene scene propelled me to plod along through countless repetitive encounters.

The combat was fun to engage with and that is a good thing, because every story beat, every side quest, every marker on your map was there to solely move you from one encounter to another.

The story is a tiring western perspective on samurai honour (yawn). The characters felt flat and predictable because they are the same cliches that are told over and over again. The character arcs failed to be effective because I quickly realized that there wasn't going to be an interesting outcome and that I was simply going to do another "liberate the settlement mission". This was frustrating, because for such a beautiful game, they could have equally made a beautiful and engaging story.

Despite complaints, I still enjoyed it enough to finish the game. For me, it was popcorn that happened to be nice to look at. It didn't require anything from me emotionally or cognitively and that might be what I needed during a time where the real world demands those things from me on a daily basis.

A bit of a letdown after how much I enjoyed the previous games. It outstays its welcome a bit and the battle system ends up completely leaning on a fairly lame stagger mechanic. By the end it just feels like the game's preventing you from using your items and skills more than dealing with them more directly which makes even basic fights much more spongey than they need to be. Item management feels kind of a pain too. It's still fun to blow up bosses in one shot, you just need to spend a few turns lining that up, even more so in late bosses where not only does it have the stagger point but also summon enemies which soak up even more damage. Ultimately unsatisfying.