Well said. It is a bit rich to have someone whose idea of top-tier JRPG storytelling is Xenoblade 3 tell me that I've probably only played FF. I remember when JRPGs actually had stories worth a damn, and one of those JRPGs was Xenogears, a game I was absolutely blown away by as a kid even though I barely understood a quarter of what it was saying. Now the same creative lead behind that game is making absolutely execrable trash like Xenoblade 2-3. The greatest video game scenario writer of all time, Yasumi Matsuno, was forced out of the games industry after he wrote masterpieces like Tactics Ogre, FF Tactics, and Vagrant Story. The same studio that created the brilliant minimalist narrative of SMT Nocturne currently churns out nothing but power of friendship slop (I literally can't remember anything about the story of Metaphor Refantazio). There has been such a clear regression in the quality of JRPG narratives over the past two decades that a game like Expedition 33, which wouldn't have been particularly impressive on the PS1 in terms of its story, actually does stand head and shoulders above anything coming out of Japan, with very, very few exceptions.
