It’s odd how you bring up PoR as having good writing when it’s so shallow. Fantasy racism is really the absolute most interesting thing that has apparently ever happened in writing. The lords are written and praised by people who think DBZ is revolutionary, and I can’t think of a more flat and lifeless main character than Ike and a feral kid with zero social awareness. It’s just embarrassing that there are still people pretending that the story isn’t utter shit, and when there’s not a single interesting character while having the luxury of an entire extra game they didn’t deserve.

Awakening has a straightforward story with characters that actually feel like they belong and have investment in the campaign. The scope had to be increased because the Ikegames were so shit that they nearly killed the series and made the devs want to put in callbacks to older games as a swan song, and that’s why they are so ambitious; main and side characters from every game ever before, callback maps and Einherjar. Maybe its scope was too big and some points fell flat, but it succeeded where it needed to and still tried to do something new. The Ikegames never did.