Deceptively good game I reckon. Visual direction of the characters and landscapes were gorgeous, and I appreciated how large all the dungeons were. Music was great. Sidequests made me come to quite like the cast. The combat wasn't fantastic, but the effect animations were all quite flashy and I enjoyed having to navigate around the AOE attacks of bosses and larger enemies. Harvestella's heavy sidequest focus, boss design and its story revolving around the four Seaslight (crystals) are places where you can really feel that this was one major inspiration feeding into FFXVI. In that sense I suppose it was good I accidentally took a 7 month break on the game, since approaching it this side of FFXVI offers that new insight.

Additionally: Obligatory Xeno-posting. Thought I was signing up for an Atelier-lite, but actually received Square Enix's spiritual successor to Xenogears. I clued into it being as such pretty early after a vague inkling that Geist reminded me of Grahf, and then began noticing more similarities in the narrative. But near the end it really went all in on that with the plot recurrences and specific homage/parallels, such as "mother Sophia" of the church, Lost Gaia = the Zeboim ruins, another consciousness buried within Ein, and most excitingly the Gaia Defense System being visually modelled on Kadomony and its powers as an existence-altering perpetual motion machine mirroring the Zohar. Among a number of other things, and even some recurring Xenoblade iconography.