And even then, it's obvious that it was three stories (Basch-centric, Ashe-centric, and Balthier-centric) working against one another, at times, while simultaneously being told from the perspective of a person just along for the ride with nothing to add who was made the "main" character for appeal to demographic purposes.

It went through so many changes in its development that it ran headlong into some storytelling difficulties at times, but the actual performance of the translation and the voice actors made it work.

Even for just your little bit of time, try to tell me it wouldn't have been a better game with just this tiny little switch: Vaan and Penelo don't exist. Instead of being killed, Vaan's brother lives, and is the main character. You can go through the same general motions in terms of plot, but the reaction and the inter-character play would have been vastly superior. Instead of Vaan confronting Basch on his brother's behalf, his brother does so directly. Balthier having to be a pirate while confronting a former member of the military would provide better interplay, etc.

As far as the gameplay aspects are concerned, it's a love it or hate it thing. Can't blame you, but I enjoyed the entire system which was MMO-esque. I liked how status effects actually mattered. I liked just running around killing stuff. I liked how enemies didn't just straight-up drop gold. *shrug*