It's a good game that suffers from always being compared to the other games. I think playing this as a kid was a lot more fun back in the day cause of how the internet areas were so entangled. It felt like I was always experiencing it for the first time and coming across a way forward was a big reward in itself. It was also lots of fun to get on Gamefaqs and find maps or guides on what to do next (it was that era of gaming).

It is hard to go back to after BN2 since it has a lot of flaws that are addressed later on including the chips not dimming when making a selection in the custom screen. I replayed it on the legacy collection recently and it only took 12 hours from start to finish and doing a tiny bit of side content too. Not really worth skipping if you find the combat interesting and want to play the rest of the series.