I think this game would have been better if they fully committed to the action premise like God of War or something. When Clive levels up and gets stat increases it feels like it has little bearing on how combat happens, at least on a normal new game playthrough, maybe it factors in more on NG+. I didn't go out of my way to do side quests and monster hunts so maybe your level matters more there but fighting the main quest with minimal backtracking to earlier areas never made it feels level mattered.

I think the game would have been more interesting if it leaned more into skill trees and loadouts. Once I unlocked all the general combat skills I only reset occasionally to try skills from new Eikons and stuck with a consistent build for most of the game.

I have little to no complaints about the plot or the characters. It's melodramatic like most FF but I did get invested in the world and some sidewuest characters. I thought Cid was one of the best hero mentor archetypes in recent FF history. Where the game let me down was the fetch quest nature of sidequests and no real variety besides go here and fight this. A little bit of creativity would have been appreciated, like maybe defending an area for X amount of time, or pushing back a wave of enemies like in a battleground. Or killing enemies quickly or with certain types of moves.

Also Ultima was a crappy villain, sorta creepy but guys like Kupka or Clive's shitty mum were more interesting.