cut the bloat
maybe average falcom fan thinks hours/dollar is the only signifier of quality, but unless you are a poor console-locked child who gets maybe one game a year, there are just better things to do gaming-wise and even those are probably grinding ftp garbage nowadays
no fetch quests, no templated dungeons, no swaths of enemies dumped before chests
then you can focus on designing encounters and progression, or make branching dialogue that properly involves your waifu in the plot, or just spend more time refining shit that already works
then suddenly people stop bitching about status effects and autoattacks and romance options, once they aren't based on a framework which only saps your time