I spent my entire playthrough of this game swinging back and forth between “This is infuriatingly trivial and I wish it would take the training wheels off” and “This is just the normal kind of infuriating, I like puzzle games and I hate everything about this combat system”.

Similarly, I kept going back and forth between “Is this an ok game, just not the game I want it to be?” and “Wait is this actually just an objectively bad game?” I think it ended up being the latter.

There’s no heart. No depth. Combat is hot garbage. Core RPG mechanics might as well not exist. On one hand all the RPG staples are smoothed over and sanded down, presumably for ease of use? But no, screw you, we replaced it with something more complicated and weird to the point of being alien. And then we turned around and justified this horrifically disjointed difficulty roller-coaster by adding a stereotypical condescending Nintendo “aww is the widdle gamer having a hard time playing the video game? press a to make it easier!” feature to the entire game.

Even if they took the time to balance the difficulty curve I’d still not have enjoyed it. I just want Thousand Year Door: 2, but that game will never be made. Probably going to pass on the inevitable sequel in 5 years.