Well, so I've finished the game a few days ago.
The ending was definitely underwhelming, imo. I think the game peaked at the
fight. The whole presentation of that battle was amazing, especially the music and the interwoven cutscenes. Can't describe what I felt when the soundtrack changed, soooooo gooood.
On the whole I'm kinda torn. There are some aspects of the game that are incredibly fun, but there is probably an equal amount of stuff that is equally annoying.
It looks great, the combat system is really fun, I liked all the characters and the story was mostly decent and had some great moments here and there.
On the other hand, some bosses were really annoying, the AI is dumb as a brick most of the time and I couldn't care less about the equipment-skill system.
Especially the skill system. At first I fight it would be pretty cool, had lots of possibilities for customization, etc. I remember farming equipment at the beginning until everyone had the first or second column full and got a major boost.
Sounds cool in theory, but this also meant that I got absolutely nothing better for a veeery long time.
At some point I just said fuck it and just stopped (mostly) caring about the whole system and fusioning and everyting and just used whatever I had on hand that looked liked an upgrade at the first glance.
I think I defeated the final boss on moderate without a single fusioned equipment piece because I just couldn't be bothered anymore.
I think my biggest problem with the skill system is that you don't really have much control at all until very late in the game with the Normins, Drop Rate Boost, Luring, Weapon Ordering etc, but at this point I already didn't care anymore and used neither of them for the most part.
Doesn't help that the game apparently has a ton of little hidden mechanics around that system that are poorly explained ingame.
Well yeah, on the whole I think it was an alright game, but I don't have much interest in playing the Alicia DLC or post-game content. Thank god I got free Symphonia with it (never played it, so I'm looking forward to it).