You know Sombron's story is terrible when there's a theory that the Zero Emblem is Shouzou Kaga and it actually makes sense.
lmao that'd make a whole lot of sense actually
Okay, after thinking a bit more about it: Things I Like
The combat feels satisfying and almost always fair (I played in Hard), the game gives you a lot of tools to play around with
The animations are fluid and varied, making each battle fun to watch
Things I'm Mixed On
The Emblem system. It's mostly good, but man I wish the explanation was clearer on which skills are automatically active when you're synced and which ones go active when Engaged. I eventually got it, but it took some time. Also not all of them are well-balanced. Does anyone use Dodge Up?
Also about the Emblem, I think having each Emblem having Bond conversations with all characters is just gratuitous and they're not really emotionally impactful anyway. It just makes raising Bond levels more tedious.
The subsystems -- some of them feel a bit detached, like the Tower of Trials, or polishing rings.
Somniel itself. It's not as big as Garreg Mach and some activities (cooking, Arena) always feel worth it to do, but it's still a bit of a drag later on when I was farming Gold
Forging. It's fun, but the money problems make it prohibitively expensive. I like forging killer weapons a lot.
No more weapon endurance except for staves. It makes managing the equipment easier in some ways, but I keep forgetting to restock staves.
The characters. A lot of them are fun and quirky, like 3H amped up, but it feels uneven at times. Some of them are still dour and serious. Like the cast comes from different FE games (which is funny considering the Emblems DO come from different FE games).
The character design. Some are okay and like 'FE, but cooler (e.g. Diamant, Kagetsu)', but others went way overboard
Things I Dislike
How hard it is it to get Gold, it's miserable and basically you need to build Anna to have a decent experience farming it
Level scaling on skirmish is wack, they're always harder than the main quests...
The story is mostly either too cliche or too melodramatic... On surface, it's just Good vs. Evil, which might be okay if they go all out with it, but then they undercut it by having boo hoo tragic backstories for the villains at the last moments before their death
That you have to have an NSO subscription to access the Relay trials
No S-ranking support nor paired epilogues for anyone except Alear, boo!