It is, it's a bit bloated like ppp are saying. It's funny I wanted more side quests and openness in remake, I wanted a bit less of it in rebirth. It's just impossible to have an open world not feel empty if you don't fill it with tasks, but I think they could have made the subtasks a bit more engaging if they leaned further into the character relationships - the best side quests gave you some more depth to your teammates, and I feel they could have done more of that without taxing the lore more heavily. As with remake, the character details and relationships are by far the best element, and bravo again to this team for meeting the challenge of expanding and improving on what was already the main draw of the original - the feeling that you know these weirdos, that you're on the team with them. And yes of course I cried.

Ultimately just way too repetitive - it hooked me initially with a great style and interesting squad building & balancing mechanics, but the combat and overworld cycles are locked in rhythms that are just way too predictable to engage with regularly. A higher level of difficulty and more RNG in combat would have made the whole thing more interesting - the game wants you to solve the problems of each encounter by finding the correct configuration of units to counter the enemy squad, and ultimately this just becomes too simple and rote to be compelling.