The best parts graphically are definitely the monster designs and some of the battle backgrounds.
The worst part for me is the heavy reuse of NPC models. There's a part where you talk to this professor in the past, return to the present, and then you find him standing there three times right next to each other. Since this was the first time I encountered his model I thought he time traveled and cloned himself until I realized those were just different generic professor dudes.
This somehow never threw me off in the older games with the more symbolic NPC sprites, but with the more detailed models it's a bit confusing to travel all over the planet and always encounter the same people with the same town music. Sure, there's different accents and obviously different stories, but sometimes it feels too samey for such a long game.
I mean, this happens in almost every game that has that many NPCs, but in this game it's a really small pool of people.
The unique NPC models are always delightful, though. The grumpy looking king is hilarious.
