After being disappointed with the prequel I pretty much avoided this game until recently when events conspired to give me an excess of free time.
The opening chapter is decent enough apart from some incredibly annoying time-wasting segments which have no business in what’s effectively a tutorial, and the presentation of the first town is well done. The game then opens up nicely afterward with the various quests and exploration points. Unfortunately… while there are indeed no fate ghosts, which is a major plus, ultimately I just don’t like the combat system in any respect.
If I want to play an action game I’ll play a soulslike where I only have to worry about a single PC; if I’m playing a party-based RPG I want something slower. It’s tolerable here for fighting random enemies on the world map, but for boss fights it’s a giant pain in the ass to have to keep track of three separate characters’ resource pools in real time.