Star Ocean the Divine Force beaten:

This game should have been good.  It had good art, good voice actors, a decent plot, a good composer famous for many other good soundtracks, a track record of previous great games in the franchise, etc.  But it was barely playable.  The minigame was probably the most fun aspect, because it reminded me of playing Go, a much better game than Star Ocean 6.

The music wasn't good, despite being composed by Motoi Sakuraba.  He apparently didn't feel like trying this time.  The fighting system was awful.  I never had control of my characters and couldn't do any of the things I was supposed to do, like dodge, block, chain attacks, or blindsides.  It was all too technically difficult to pull off.  The leveling up grid where you buy attributes was too complicated and difficult to navigate, especially since the same skill points are necessary to level up crafting skills, so you have to choose between completing quests by being a good crafter or being strong enough to win battles.

Flying around the world with D.U.M.A.-chan was pretty fun, I liked the jump puzzles.  But it's ridiculous that you have to hold down the left joystick to have the right to run, in every other game you run just by tilting the joystick to the edge of its motion, this is so much more cumbersome.

The plot got bogged down in repetitive conversations that never went anywhere.  Everyone kept arguing the same thing back and forth, then fighting for the tenth time.  This game could have been so much shorter.  If I'd defeated everyone the first time I fought them and only argued with them once it might have been a good game.

Too many characters join the party way too late in the game.  I've learned how to fight with a particular character, how on Earth am I supposed to learn with an all new character 80% of the way through the game?  With the gameplay already this hard?  Either let me have them at the beginning or not at all.

I'm just glad it's finally over.  I bought this game the moment it came out in 2022.  Now it's finally done with.  Now I'm stuck playing the equally unplayable FF 16 instead, another game I assumed would be good based on its franchise track record but most certainly wasn't.

I won't make these mistakes again.  No Star Ocean 7 or FF 17 for me, they've both worn out my trust.  The only FF's I want to play anymore are remakes of their older, better games.  FF 8 Remastered was great, as was FF 7 Remake.  Those were the days. . .

Meanwhile One Pace has released a full version of Drum Island, so now you can watch the concise version of the story till midway through Arabasta.  If One Pace finished Arabasta and Water 7 all that would be left is Skypiea and Wano.  I have a different group's abridged Skypiea so the work is actually nearing completion.  I would love to watch a fully abridged One Piece from start to finish, that would be heaven.

I'm on the third short story of Cyanotype Daydream, featuring Shakespeare of all people as the protagonist.  The music wasn't good enough to keep my interest so I turned it off and went back to listening to my ultimate music hall of fame.  I upgraded 'Bonny Morn' from Colonization, 'Tsukiwarawa' from Air and 'Lunatic Pandora' from FF8 to 5-star.  Lunatic Pandora has been 5-star before, but I decided it edged out 'Ahead on our Way' from FF 5 due to having a better synthesizer, a more advanced and mellifluous sound.  Tsukiwarawa has also been 5-star before, but I demoted it for some dumb reason.  Now it's back in place of 'Death of Pirotas' which, though good, isn't as good as Tsuki.  All the other tiers have also been improved upon and gotten more accurate.  For instance, the songs of Triangle Strategy all got promoted a tier.