Now, when you aren't being bogged down by it, the combat system is actually pretty good. I think at times when you aren't capable of moving a enemy, it kinda loses its luster, but it's another puzzle aspect I suppose, though I know at times it can make some bosses more dangerous if you can't simply take out the other enemies first.
The issue with the PVE is that once you start grinding, since the patterns can change, even if they only swap a couple different ways, if you aren't running a lot of AoE big hits, the AI isn't gonna cover that for you effectively. This can waste a lot of resources when you can get the AI to do it and just walk away, like the hunting grounds, or now if you wanna just exp/money grind, manually walk around the stage into enemies. It can just take a good bit of time without giving much in return, so it can get repetitive really quickly when you aren't seeing good progression, like moving the story forward, getting one time rewards, etc.
Arena is just bizarre to me, which is kinda a gacha issue moment as well. Like most of these games do, they'll hit you with a quest list, whether daily or weekly, timed rewards, whatever, and this unlocks after World 3. Now I always understand it's a gacha and that aspect is gonna be dumb by just paying to win that, fine sacrifice, but the way it's setup is so weird. You just plop the units down the best you think it'll work out and just go in. The strategy of smacking people around, not there really. If you're attacking, you get like 3 pips to use, then the defense goes and has like 9+ or whatever Xd You can do some cheeky things with 3 pips once you get enough + in costumes, but it just doesn't feel like the game you've been playing up to this point.
Story is fine for the parts I watched from time to time, but once again, a gacha type issue. Rewards are based around hitting milestones to even attempt them realistically, so what do you do, watch everything and do all the optional content, or what is required to hit checkmarks? Now the issue. When you hit skip, it tells you a short version, which, doesn't match up with everything that is being said. Since time to time, I'd watch said story and notice things clearly not mentioned. At one point, there is this owlbear thing that led into an issue I'll mention of it's own, which basically suggested I could either use the new ability stealth, or attempt to fight it. You do not wanna do anything of the sort.
Now I've ran into issues with another game that I played for a good bit, so when I start seeing certain things, it kind of makes me wanna stay clear, this one being bugs. So I ran into 2 that were pretty problematic. One was that when I'd go for the last one time chest in a given map, the game would disconnect me. Now if it did that AND I got the reward, which tends to be diamonds, whatever. The reward isn't given out, but the chest is used. So that's bad. The other was the owlbeast creature mentioned. Now, it'd suck enough with the story confusion and potentially getting dumpstered by the 85k hp monster and its 7k hp adds, but once I beat W4, my quest board told me to hunt one of those said monsters. So since I skipped the story and going back is the same 85k hp monster, 1960g and one quest slot is just not gonna happen. Some of these issues just feel like it wasn't tested, because I don't think the monster is set for normal, but maybe hard and they've been running into a lot of issues that feel like they probably shouldn't be there.
Worst thing easily by far I encounter and can easily lead to burnout of the game, before you even really start. Infinite rerolling is probably one of the worst things ever, whether it's from this game or any other that uses it. Instead of simply given you something and just going about your day, it takes something that should be minutes into potential hours for one draw. The draw is filled with like 50% garbage, then if you want a unit to be at their starting best, you have to reroll for the unit and their weapon, which can take a lot of time just for that, let alone if you decide to take advantage and get some UR weapons, since you likely won't be seeing high grade weapons for a LOOOOnnng time. It's also forced before using your tickets or diamonds, so if you decide to push your luck, the tutorial into the infinite to that, is a good bit of time. Maybe a specific summon ticket with the selection of units and weapon, with a 10 ticket would have been fine to make the pace better. If you don't care to reroll, you got the unit and gear SR you wanted, if you do, you get to the summon screen quicker.
This feels like it'd been a pretty great full sale game if it cut around the gacha aspects.
*Forgot to add one thing. I recalled about a pretty big issue with the weapon system. So the game doesn't seem to let you reroll stats, only the letter grade. This is a hefty issue, as some units cannot utilize specific stats well, like crit/%. One of the first characters you get can get up to 3 true damage skills that does this, but her weapon can get crit%. If you say, get her SR or UR from a pull, the crit% showing up, let alone if it's in the 3 slots, can drop a good amount of usefulness. Like if you did the SR, getting 2 26 atks with a +9 gear, is another 26 atk. So you'd lose out on 52 atk to a worthless stat. This can happen to the UR as well and it just simply shouldn't be that way. The game could easily fix this by letting you reroll the secondary stat or slots. If you get a EX weapon pull, you shouldn't have to worry about it being awful. If it's temporary, whatever, but permanent dumpster fire, no thank you, that's some bad design.