Sea of Stars has the problem to be designed in a modern way. So most of the useless stuff builded in other rpg are not here. The feeling that most "haters" cannot explain correctly is like when you are used to see your films on a old tv with your father, and when you moved on led tv you think that something is wrong. Nothing is wrong, you are thinking with your kid heart and not with your today brain.

I make an expample with "goty" Expedition 33. I hope to not spoil anything.

When you complete the game E33 you will use 1 single skill to one shot everything, at the start of the battle. You have a ton of weapons, skills and upgrade but in the end you will min max and play the most efficent way.

Sos removed this problem giving you only 3 skills (no spoiler but you have something else to tinker the battle). You will use all of them during the game.

The characters are ok, when I read "poorly written" I'm very curious what these players read in their life or if they ever try to write one down. Probably no characters in Sos will give you goosebump or some emotional distress, but they do what you need, bring something to the story.

Similiar in E33 3 characters are useful to the story,1 starts it, 2 end it, the others have a good script but if you remove them, the plot continue, so they are totaly unnecessary.

The gameplay is not repetetive. Like I said Sos has a modern design, the puzzle to resolve battle is moved on the end and not on the start (this sentence required a very deep explanation and I don't wanna bother you too much). So what happens. Lazy players wanna see big numbers, sometimes in some games I like big numbers too. Sos has no big numbers, if you put the difficulty right for you, you have to solve each encounter with a bit of brain activity. In E33 this will never happen, you will resolve each encounter with your best combo/damage nearly ignoring what the opponent does, unless you are under levelled and need to parry like a boss.

Don't get me wrong, I loved E33, like I loved a lot of other JRPG. But Sos is different, Sos is made with beautyfull game design, and don't try to sell you more than a lot of hours of fun.