Yea a lot of that was apparently because if the Phil Fish "Japanese can't make good games" video. I really tuned out to video games at the time and even now I'm just barely holding on. Even Trails burned its bridge for me after I saw Kuro/Daybreak's combat changes (which are probably still good, they're just not for me).
The only series I'd recommend now is Atelier and the only reason I haven't played more games is because I'm just not buying video games for the forseeable future.
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