I really struggled to click with this game. The battle system is cumbersome. Visions in battle were frustrating and broke the pacing. Some characters (and arts) are objectively better than others yet the game incentivizes you to mix all of them in order to max affinity. In general, the affinity and skill trees among party members felt restricting and I would have much preferred a standard skill point system or something. I enjoyed the story, for the most part. Although I will say that I vastly prefer all of the spoiler-y story bits presented in the endgame to the actual party members themselves. The smaller scale interactions between party members got downright annoying at times and the voice acting was super iffy (it's been memed to death at this point but it seriously just feels annoying atp). You will never convince me that Riki is a cute or likeable character. I think Shulk's relationship with Fiora made sense but there was literally no reason to turn it into a love triangle with Melia other than fanservice/JRPG tropes that I detest. And it ultimately contributed to Melia feeling like the most incomplete character by the game's end. Sidequests sucked. They were super boring and did nothing to meaningfully expand the world or entertain the player. The collectopedia and gem crafting were stupid. Rebuilding colony 6 was tedious. The final dungeon had such a huge difficulty spike that I switched the game to easy mode in order to circumvent it. I'm glad the easy mode exists, but I wish I didn't have to use it. There were so many instances when I wished there was a run button. The soundtrack was very nice, and the visual remaster made the game look very pretty.

To me, this game feels like a good story, but presented all wrong. I don't care for the battle mechanics at all, side modes never held my attention, and I always felt like I needed to push to the end without wanting to ever stop and smell the roses. I feel like this would have been better as an anime or something. What good is a competent story if it's not fun to experience?