Having gone completely unspoiled by this series, I think I was most surprised that this game's story was more or less self-contained. I was sure that it was going to be split across all 3 games with Hakuowlo as the protagonist of all 3. I'm guessing 2 and 3 will be more contiguous and they'll try to tell a larger story? I honestly don't even know who the protag is yet, so I'm just guessing based on the general way I've heard people talk about them.
I think the great cast kind of carried the majority of this game before the final act, because aside from the strong start (I love a good civilian uprising), I didn't really find any of the secondary antagonists very interesting. They were all mustache-twirling evil aside from maybe the guy who thought Hakuowlo was his murderer brother (although even that was stupid when you consider that they razed entire villages for literally no reason). I mean the initial invasion from Shikeripechim was started and resolved in like 10 minutes flat even counting the "battle" where I just killed a bunch of defenseless Woptors... I think the event where Touka's doll gets broken might actually be longer than that, which just seems wrong for Tuskur's first existential threat after its establishment. And the flashback section to Kamuchataal (lol when she showed up in the epilogue like she's as important as my squad) stealing from the castle was literally hours long in comparison, despite never going anywhere or having any impact on the story (waluigi guy was unexpectedly funny with his battle dialogue tho I'll admit).
(1/2)