This is the most competent FF production since 12. By far the biggest issues of the game are related to filler and molasses slow menuing
If they cut all filler arcs (all the bland bullshit you need to do between eikon fights), trimmed down the number of side quests leaving only the actually impactful ones like endgame character quests and revamped the ui by removing insane amount of delay for every action you do, it would be a competent and fun 30 hours game. Instead it's 60 hours long, and half of it is ass.
The story certainly has problems (Annabella should've been the central villain, usurping eikon power and becoming Ultima) but i'd argue the game has one of the strongest casts in the history of the franchise, a lot of side characters are genuinely cool, the central hub NPCs in particular like Charon.
Certainly better than liquid vomit like 13 and 15 anyway.