It is more an evolution of the character action genre than the RPG foundation the franchise was built on.
It merges quick twitch reflexes with character-building RPG mechanics, but focuses far more on the former than ever before.
It has a 50+ hour story that spans decades’ worth of history in the realm of Valisthea, a land brimming with both beauty and death.
It includes Eikons and Dominants, powerful beings familiar to Final Fantasy fans, as well as special humans who can harness their power.
It has an ingenious quality-of-life feature called Active Time Lore, which allows you to bring up contextual compendium entries that are relevant to what’s going on in any cutscene or conversation.
It has a combat system that is fast, flexible, extremely reflex-driven, and is full of opportunities to absolutely style on your enemies with air combos, jump cancels, and a huge arsenal
It only lets you control one character, Clive Rosfield, the eldest prince of the kingdom of Rosaria and protector of his brother Joshua, the Dominant of Phoenix.
It has side quests that act as smart ways to button up all of the loose threads outside of the main campaign, and bounty board that you can use to locate exceptionally challenging monsters for some greater rewards.
It only lets you control one character, Clive Rosfield, the eldest prince of the kingdom of Rosaria and protector of his brother Joshua, the Dominant of Phoenix.
It has a New Game+ mode and an arcade mode for high scores to upload to an online leaderboard.
It has one of the best soundtracks of 2023 so far, and looks stunning even on the prioritized frame rate graphical setting.