Wait, you haven't played 8-12?
I'm all for fresh ideas. That's why I love the series so much. With every title they reinvent something. They were able to do this without deprecating the party system for 15 games in a row. Now it's the biggest step they have ever taken. It's not that it's bad but that it's the complete opposite of my preferences that were nurtured in all previous games.
I like parties, I like different characters, I like that each of them excels in a different area, I like turn based strategy. All of this is pretty much gone with the new combat system. It's a single(boring) allrounder character in a battle system that relies too much on skill and less on strategy. That is what boring western developers do and japanese developers shouldn't.
Also I'm not sold on this "open world" stuff. The term gets tossed around too much and I have yet to see a real open world JRPG(Xenoblade Chronicles was the closest one so far). I may not have seen much of LR but what I've seen is as much open world as the previous games which were no open world at all.
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