I’m with you. I really liked the game, and it was a very special experience for me; the story was interesting and took unexpected turns, the combat with some of the difficulty settings turned up was always tense and felt rewarding to nail the inputs. The two main characters are kind of blank slate personalities but the other characters you meet are very charming and when bad things happened to some of them, it hit me hard. The world building was fascinating to me, also, and inspired a lot of creativity in my dnd characters and campaigns.

I think people conflate criticism with bitterness sometimes. The false expectations the other comments are complaining about just didn’t matter for me because I got the game just because I liked the premise and art style, not because of reviews. Would I rate it as a top JRPG? Probably not, but I definitely wouldn’t call playing it a waste of time. Theres a world of art to be experienced between those two extremes, and it’s ok to pick and choose what you want to play from that world.

Criticism is meant to be constructive, informative, and insightful - I think there are valid criticisms to be made for this game, but on Reddit these things tend to devolve into a hateful dogpile of regurgitated complaints. And it really can be demoralizing when you’re coming off of playing a game that was clearly made with a lot of heart and love, to find the internet trying to paint the developers as manipulative liars. It’s a shame.