WK plays Lightning Returns

[Wolf Kanno]

So I pretty much did everything in the staring town and reached he Noel fight, where he proceeded to wipe the floor with me due to my bad blocking skills (I prefer to dodge if allowed) and me doing chip damage to him despite hitting him with Deprotect and Deshell. I even acquired a shiny new weapon I earned from one of the Etro cultist just before the fight that has better stats than anything I currently own. Looking online for some tips, I learned I should probably just walk away and explore the other regions and do some missions to raise my stats before really tackling the big story missions final bosses. So I went back to Snow's home turf and did a few quests before heading of to the Wildlands to discover where I'm assuming Sazh is holding up along with possibly Caius.

Pros:

• After two games lacking real cities, it is nice to finally explore some real locations that feel like people live there. The Gothic vibe of Luxerion is pretty neat, while the Carnival vibe of Snow's location is pretty cool as well.
• I did enjoy the Gourmet/Sleezy's restaurant quest.
• After his awful redesign in XIII-2, I love that Snow finally has a decent outfit for a change. It might be my favorite one in the trilogy for him.

Cons:

• Again, if blocking is going to be such a major mechanic for the game, why couldn't we just give it a default button and let every schemata use it?
• I'm really not loving the combat system. I'm not sure if I just need to practice more, or figure out a better load out, but combat just feels clunky and slow to me. The fact I don't get much reward from fighting also gives me less incentive to fight. So combat just feels like a complete chore so far in this game.
• Oh god, I've found two quests that involve me coming back every day at the same time. I can already tell they will likely play it to the wire. Neither sounds interesting either.
• The worst part of these "real time" games is just trying to figure out how to kill time efficiently between mission objectives, and like Majora's Mask, I feel like it's going o be a while before I get the time down correctly.
• Some of these quests are just... ugh. Like I appreciate that the game is not going full edge lord here and making everything grim dark, but the humor also feels really awkward and weird. Maybe it's just not my type of humor?
• I think my biggest issue with the story so far, is that I'm following two characters I never cared for in the previous games. Like yes, XIII-2 did a lot to make Hope more likable, but he's sill not compelling for me, and I also think it was dumb to de-age him here. But I honestly feel Hope and Lightning are more interesting characters when they are not interacting with each other. I dreaded their chapters together in the original XIII. So coming back to that dynamic isn't selling this game very well for me. I also find their non-Mission support conversations to be atrocious and this game is beating its concepts over the players head harder than even Kingdom Hearts.
• I'm having a difficult time getting into this game. I spent a whole day just playing through, and I walked away from the experience being mostly frustrated and bored. Granted, I feel part of the issue here is me. I just don't care about XIII and its setting. Like I was okay to call it quits after XIII-2 and my overall mood with this game is simply "let's get this over with" so that's likely feeding into my sour mood while I play. It's hard to stay focused on something when you don't really care about the outcome. I don't have anything to feel invested in.