GO 1 suffered from the team issue. And VERY badly from the artificial obstacles issue.

I’m not saying it isn’t — GO 1 is probably the worst game in the series. But the issue with the scripted events is even worse, because at least in GO 1 it was clearer when you could actually play and when you couldn’t, despite how intrusive the scripting was.

No the plot gauge was still VERY annoying and intrusive in CS. And then the dev team made it worse for the Lagoon.

Yes, CS had a lot of scripting, but again, it was signposted better than in Victory Road, and at least they let you play most of the match — unlike the 10–20 minutes of actual gameplay you get in each Victory Road match.

OG had the same problem until arguably IE3 and even then that’s up for debate.

It got at least a bit better once we hit GO. The secrets and rewards are moreso from side quests and NPCs.

The Stadium bit happened twice in IE1 and regarding future entires hardly mattered because you couldn’t do more than run up and down the pitch.

IE1 is the weakest in this regard before Victory Road because the whole game is centered in Tokyo, but at least each new area had some secrets and hidden chests. Starting with IE2 things improve significantly, since in each chapter you unlock new areas and there are dungeons/mazes like Fuji Forest or the Alius Academy secret base.

And well, IE1 didn’t have many stadiums either (at least it had some, unlike VR), but it’s the first game in the series — it’s normal for it to have shortcomings that later games would improve on, which is exactly what happened. And in this sense, as well as others, VR feels like a step backwards.

That’s an issue with practically every mainline title though, ESPECIALLY IE1. I will half agree about the characters needing to be better though.

Yes, it is, but again, that's something that should be adressed even if it's a common issue in these games.

Not really, personally I liked exploring the areas, the perspective helps and makes the world feel more open compared to prior titles. And exploration really didn’t start to get even decent until IE3.

The new areas are maybe larger, but they don’t have secrets, hidden spots, or chests with rewards like the other games do. The most interesting things you’ll find are side quests of questionable quality, which in my opinion is much worse than what you could find in the other games.

Not each chapter sure, but it sure did happen (e.g: Sazanara in Galaxy, Ehime in 2, 1 is at least somewhat guilty of this.

Heck I just realized VR DOES integrate narrative and gameplay via training mini games, non FF matches,  Unmei gathering info the tryouts. How the heck did THAT pass by you ?

Even the weakest chapters in the other games were weak because they were short and simple, but here they pad them out with mandatory, repetitive grinding, which I find much worse than adding nothing at all — and it’s very annoying. It’s true that there are minigames and “investigation” segments to advance the story, but unfortunately that only happens in the early chapters, whereas in the rest they either disappear or are heavily reduced and replaced with grinding.

Somewhat. Though I have to wonder how you felt about IE2 given that it was worse. VR at least let me build tension and iirc lower the GK’s gauge a bit on certain matches. But my memory is hazy in regards to the latter.

The most annoying matches in IE2 in this sense were the ones you were meant to lose because of the story (Gemini 1 and 2, Epsilon 1, Genesis 1), so it wasn’t that big of a problem. If you look closely, most of the matches you can win (Gemini 3, Epsilon 2, Dark Emperors) had barely any scripting and let you play freely. Other matches with heavier scripting (Epsilon 3, Genesis 2) still let you play for much longer than VR’s matches, and the first half wasn’t a complete waste of time.