I'm at the half mark of the game and my experience is mostly positive. I like the story even though it's not the greatest story out there, the somewhat free roam battle system, and the characters are pretty colorful by appearance and personality wise (I mostly like every character except Oliver, he's just kinda bland).
The only negatives I have for the game is the bad AI (which shouldn't EVER be a deal breaker, I'm on normal difficulty and can deal with it), the difficulty spikes, and the somewhat wonky battle system at times. Like I said I could go into detail but this is mostly the gist of it. Like I said before none of these problems are big enough to break the game for me, especially not the story aspect because I've seen worse JRPG stories before. Not to mention nowadays looking for a fresh new unexplored story in a JRPG is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
I think this game's experience for you is depending mostly on how you approach it. My one friend played the demo and said no because the main character was a kid, and the monsters looked to cute that he saw it as... well you know. My other friend saw the battle system and thought that it would be as free as the Tales Of battle system but came out disappointed because he held the game's expectations up too much. Those are 2 example's of expectations being too high, one thought it would be totally free roam and the other saw the appearance and said no.
So yeah everyone has their different opinions on this game and that's a good thing. I don't think I've ever seen a game before that was 100% perfection with not 1 person who didn't have a bad experience.