Why should I replay this game?

[Karifean]

And the gameplay is the most mind-bogglingly dull affair in the series, as I literally just walked through everything with the Analog stick and only ever changed things up by using Quickenings on bosses.

Sounds to me like the curse of overleveling. Try going from story point to story point for the first few parts of the game without doing much additional fighting, and then see if you can still just 'walk through everything'.

[Ayen]

I still just don't see the appeal of this game. The plot may be ok, but it's hardly great, even by FF standards. And the gameplay is the most mind-bogglingly dull affair in the series, as I literally just walked through everything with the Analog stick and only ever changed things up by using Quickenings on bosses. Heck, even turning off Gambits doesn't really help, because it just makes combat take forever, it doesn't make it interesting. The world is great, but the game's pacing ruins it and makes the entire thing feel like a massive dungeon crawl that you can't wait to get out of. The lore is fantastic, but is delivered to you in a way that makes you have to kill more stuff if you want to see more of it, even though you just want to avoid everything because it's so boring. The Mark hunts massively overshadow the actual well-written sidequests, and are boring and repetitive. The item progression is totally borked, with end-game items being available really early on, and the entire system being based around grinding for rare drops. The Espers are near worthless, because your party members are better for 99% of the situations. The battle mechanics are self-contradictory and annoyingly unfair. The "I'm Captain Basch" is the most annoying and nonsensical scene Square has ever written, easily beating out FFX's laughing scene. The story shifts gears massively at several points for no real reason. Vayne is still one of the most cookie-cutter evil villains in the series. Vaan has less involvement in the plot than any other character in the cast...

Welp, that settles it. I'm reviewing the game in September. Why September? I have a long list of recently acquired games I want to play first and my schedule only gives me time to play the games I review so that's the soonest I can play it...

[Fynn]

I still just don't see the appeal of this game. The plot may be ok, but it's hardly great, even by FF standards. And the gameplay is the most mind-bogglingly dull affair in the series, as I literally just walked through everything with the Analog stick and only ever changed things up by using Quickenings on bosses. Heck, even turning off Gambits doesn't really help, because it just makes combat take forever, it doesn't make it interesting. The world is great, but the game's pacing ruins it and makes the entire thing feel like a massive dungeon crawl that you can't wait to get out of. The lore is fantastic, but is delivered to you in a way that makes you have to kill more stuff if you want to see more of it, even though you just want to avoid everything because it's so boring. The Mark hunts massively overshadow the actual well-written sidequests, and are boring and repetitive. The item progression is totally borked, with end-game items being available really early on, and the entire system being based around grinding for rare drops. The Espers are near worthless, because your party members are better for 99% of the situations. The battle mechanics are self-contradictory and annoyingly unfair. The "I'm Captain Basch" is the most annoying and nonsensical scene Square has ever written, easily beating out FFX's laughing scene. The story shifts gears massively at several points for no real reason. Vayne is still one of the most cookie-cutter evil villains in the series. Vaan has less involvement in the plot than any other character in the cast...

Welp, that settles it. I'm reviewing the game in September. Why September? I have a long list of recently acquired games I want to play first and my schedule only gives me time to play the games I review so that's the soonest I can play it...

You might need more time than that.

This game is really, really long

[Loony BoB]

I agree that it's better the second time around and that you can focus on and understand the storyline a little better (although it's still a bit too political for my tastes). Also, if you forget something about the storyline you have more YouTube videos to refer to than there were the last time you played it.

[Ayen]

I still just don't see the appeal of this game. The plot may be ok, but it's hardly great, even by FF standards. And the gameplay is the most mind-bogglingly dull affair in the series, as I literally just walked through everything with the Analog stick and only ever changed things up by using Quickenings on bosses. Heck, even turning off Gambits doesn't really help, because it just makes combat take forever, it doesn't make it interesting. The world is great, but the game's pacing ruins it and makes the entire thing feel like a massive dungeon crawl that you can't wait to get out of. The lore is fantastic, but is delivered to you in a way that makes you have to kill more stuff if you want to see more of it, even though you just want to avoid everything because it's so boring. The Mark hunts massively overshadow the actual well-written sidequests, and are boring and repetitive. The item progression is totally borked, with end-game items being available really early on, and the entire system being based around grinding for rare drops. The Espers are near worthless, because your party members are better for 99% of the situations. The battle mechanics are self-contradictory and annoyingly unfair. The "I'm Captain Basch" is the most annoying and nonsensical scene Square has ever written, easily beating out FFX's laughing scene. The story shifts gears massively at several points for no real reason. Vayne is still one of the most cookie-cutter evil villains in the series. Vaan has less involvement in the plot than any other character in the cast...

Welp, that settles it. I'm reviewing the game in September. Why September? I have a long list of recently acquired games I want to play first and my schedule only gives me time to play the games I review so that's the soonest I can play it...

You might need more time than that.

This game is really, really long

My Skyrim review laughs at this.

It's laugh at me, too. Make it stop