The good: Excellent story and its twist, get to revisit past characters in previous games, graphics and audio is top notch, can load from the previous English version to avoid levelling up all over again, autosave welcome.
The bad: Pacing is all over the place, customization is time consuming, minor graphical issues, revisiting places can be nostalgic for returning players.
At first, this may be your typical JRPG game but what differs from the Wii generation is how memorable when the characters and gameplay works well together like Xenoblade Chronicles or The Last Story but extending the story into four parts. This time, Instructor Rean is totally absent so Juna and her classmates band together to get everyone together, just to find the hero and stop the war from happening. The story is excellent and the twist on the hero character gives a fresh perspective than following a normal trope which is they go through the journey until they defeat the ultimate monster.
The battle system is a no brainer for newcomers and veterans. Normal attacks, arts, links, s-arts and using mechanical machines is the primer in this game. Not to mention the difficulty works for everyone. The graphics is still top notch and the sound is pitch perfect. The orchestral music is fitting and the English dubbing works with the people from Funimation which is still the best. But Japanese players would still prefer Japanese dubbing.
The replay value it top notch, though it can be time consuming. Customizing arts, pacing can be an issue if there's nowhere to breath although the autosave is welcome. Most of all, returning players may have issue since they already revisited the places from last time though at least the change is more obvious now. At least there's a few minigames to keep you busy.
Few games ever get this kind of recognition and this is one of them. Though nowadays, developers will find creative ways to make the turn based combat interesting like the Final Fantasy series joined with robot battles like Sakura Wars So Long My Love. Anyway, this game is likely one of the few that might outmatch a few games like Ocarina of Time. Still, if you're a fan of JRPG games, this one is perfect for you to play.