SCORE: 92% (A-) An incredible game!

* Exceptional Qualities *
STORY. Due to its presentation (character design, title music, etc) I expected anime cliche. I expected to not like the game but get a solid JRPG experience out of it. I was wrong. This is now one of my favourite games and easily the best of the year.
-SLAVERY & MORALITY: The story is phenomenal. An accessible and yet thorough and mature examination of slavery and social control, and the consequences of ending it. It becomes increasingly nuanced as the story progress.
-FOUND FAMILY: The main characters come from wildly different backgrounds, some of whom wish bodily harm to one another on first meeting, for believable and non-petty reasons. But by the end of it, they're a deeply connected family, cherished friends. Writing that sort of transition and taking advantage of long form storytelling to do it -- that is NOT easy, and they knocked it out of the park. I was deeply invested in these characters and their well-being and inspired by their perseverance, courage, and willingness to change. This will be a treasured memory for me.
-ROMANCE: It was great. I don't want to spoil it. It was a great journey, from nearly enemies to deep and unquestioned confidence in one another. The story even took time to examine how much of their feelings were due to circumstance or something deeper.
-VOICE ACTING: Truly fantastic on most of the main characters. All the female VAs were exceptional, even minor characters! Other supporting characters ranged from competent to good.

+ Strengths +
-COMBAT is a blast. I didn't even want the game to end, but there's plenty of extras to enjoy if you want to keep mastering characters and beefing up your skills, including a New Game +.
-LEVEL DESIGN is gorgeous and cleverly arranged. Gold standard quality of life stuff, like progress points and always clearly warning you when you reach a point of no return.
-MUSIC punches way above its weight. While not all of it is memorable, it's frequently complex, intensely emotional, rich, polished, beautiful, and always fitting to the area and situation.

= Weaknesses =
-The ART and CHARACTER DESIGNS aren't anything to write home about, but the information delivery is truly poor. It's so common for players to spend a few dozen hours in the game and have totally missed crucial, fundamental mechanics, tooltips are vague, mystifying or absent success indicators, and on and on.
-SOUND DESIGN is good, but there were some annoying quirks, like all the battle chatter.