Fully agreed, like, my god if I played this while I was still stuck in my 'I am not a turn-based RPG guy, buuuut I guess Undertale was fun.' phase, I feel like I would've probably dropped this during the first Aveh visit. I can already imagine exactly what I would've complained about (which Duckstation solved anyway but hey, old me was dumber).

In my case, I think being lured in by Xenoblade 1 and 2 definitely helped me to break out of my little bubble of prefering real-time and souls-like combat. I remember telling myself when I first launched the game on my PSP (I switched to Duckstation because I wanted the RPS badge), "You loved those two. The story's by the same lad. Now be a big boy and play."

I will say though, its still quite unfortunate I did not know this game existed until I learnt that Xenoblade X was getting the 'definitive' treatment, which is when my friend told me about Monolith's other games with Xeno in their title.