alear is somehow worse than corrin in every way, the dialog is insufferable, the cutscene animations vary between bad mocap and sfm porn in quality, and the majority of the cast is just as one note as the fates/awakening characters but with even less appealing designs. the only positives in this game are the map design and the in battle animations, which are both surprisingly good, but still far from the best the series has to offer and the emblem system makes the act of playing the game trivial. everything else is just a testament to the fact that fire emblem has been on a downward spiral since the release of awakening. the kusakihara directed games seem to be the only ones we can expect to do anything right in terms of characters and story, but even then based on the two games we've gotten they aren't that great aside from the one that is based on an existing game.
speaking of the existing games, it's also very frustrating to me how flanderized or just completely mishandled the emblems are. for a title that was initially an anniversary project you'd think they'd show a small amount of respect to the source material they're supposedly celebrating, but instead they decide to drag the legacy characters down to the level of the modern franchise in terms of writing and characterization to the point where the filler voice lines from the gacha game are better representations of these characters

i'm sure if you started with modern fire emblem and don't care for the older titles you'll enjoy this game but i absolutely hate it, and i would've preferred fire emblem to die with new mystery than become whatever the hell it is now. hopefully we'll eventually get a title that recaptures what the series used to be outside of remakes of what it used to be, but based on the trajectory of intelligent system's other rpg series, i sincerely doubt it.

addendum: i went back and finished the game, here is my review with my thoughts after not abandoning it halfway through