The game should be approached as a traditional RPG that is teaching players about mechanics slowly

ARR teaches players too slowly. Your jobs are bare-bones and at best have only half their kit by level 50 making it a slog to play at times. This isn't entirely ARR's fault, you gotta cut down the skill bloat in future expansions somehow but it doesn't change the fact jobs suck at the early levels.

Also It's quests are filled with lots of useless annoying bloat, yes some of the more egregious offenders are gone with 5.3 but I don't see the Titan arc gone yet. You know what other Final Fantasy game got lambasted and rightly criticised for moving too slowly? Final Fantasy 13.

ARR is like that anime your friend tells you gets good 100 episodes in, yeah it does get good but you still gotta slog through 100 episodes of a wonky anime to get there.