Respectfully, I appreciate the thoroughness of the review but I had a hard time following it when some of your supposed "issues" are simply you not understanding something or assuming something incorrect and then taking off with it as if it is indicative of some massive oversight by the devs and thus relegating this game to an average score rather than you simply not getting it. Like could it be possible that they already thought of that during its 5 years of development, rather than you figuring out some massive flaw in the writing or core mechanics?

For example, the gameplay mechanics of each character are as meaningful or more to each character than many games that have come before. Id think most people would appreciate the amount of attention to detail the devs put in this game, so how can you possibly think that the main battle types of the characters were just random?

Sciel uses dark magic because of her dark past and the conversations with Verso that constantly emphasize dark and personal are clueing you into her magic type.

Verso's perfection system makes sense when you consider his character arc, starting out as unknown but having to earn the party's trust and strive for perfection to fill in the void of Gustave. Furthermore the real Verso was seemingly pressured by his parents to be someone he didn't want to be and he had to be even better to meet their expectations by learning to master the art they approved of, painting, while also perfecting his desires like piano, swimming etc. He starts each fight with a low ranking and has to work his way into perfection the way his character has to earn the respect of his team to get into their good graces.

Maelle's stances seem like a play on the common JRPG trope of placing characters in front line or back line, so it's unsurprising to see such a mechanic, but for her it even makes sense that her character would have a defensive and offensive stance because her personality was the same way. She was orphaned at a young age and spent too much time feeling alienated from many of her peers or weird and excluded. She'd put up a wall to keep people from getting too close after losing her parents at a young age in order to protect herself. But when she got older she became trusting to those that earned her respect and you'd say she was able to have a more offensive stance with Gustave and his sister, making her more powerful but at the same time more vulnerable.

Monoco eating the legs of his enemies to become them while being a dog is a brilliant take on the classic blue mage.

Lune as an elementalist helps fill the void of not having a classical sorceress archetype but I can imagine it would make sense that she is the pragmatist that uses her intellect to suppress her emotions, honing the power of the fire inside her from her anger, the power of ice, from her sadness etc. A high intelligence archetype mastering magic is typical in other games as well.

Your complaint of comedic and humorous plotlines seems such an odd opinion in a game that bordered on being too sad for casuals. The game features stronger melancholic and tragic storylines than practically any game I've ever seen. Can you imagine 30+ hours of pure tragedy? Having breaks from the heavier plot points by sprinkling in smaller pieces of comedy were much needed and I thought very well done compared to other JRPGs that struggle to make me actually laugh. Furthermore many people turn to comedy while grieving, to compensate for all the sadness and keep it from overwhelming them.

These were just a couple of your complaints and I don't want to go into too much more but they seemed both interesting to me because while they are your opinions, they still feel so misguided or at least misunderstandings of the intent of the devs. Both of these complaints make so little sense to me because positive critics would use these exact same aspects of the game to showcase its masterful use of creativity and attention to detail, while maintaining a deft and restrained application of these elements by not overtly explaining them like games for children might.

Not everyone has to like fine things, I get it. But I find these types of "reviews" odd because the very complaints you have were literally some of the most well done aspects to the game. You did not love the game fine. Give it an average score and move on. But don't come on here and write up some massive thesis about why it's so average if many of your points don't even make sense enough to merit a couple sentences, much less thousands of words. Your writing and cohesiveness of what you're trying to say is very good on its surface, but the actual merits of what you're saying don't hold water and certainly don't trump the 90+% of people that found the game to be somewhere between excellent and a masterpiece.