While the game can definitely be a little grind-heavy (though there's a hidden item you can find early on to alleviate some of that), the intentionality of some of the quests, ability to make choices, and level of gameplay variation across the game raises the whole experience a lot more than I expected when I first started out. What I thought I'd only play for a few hours ended up taking over 30+ hours as I went secret hunting and figuring out all the possible story variations, and I'm definitely looking forward to the continuation of the series. There's a lot of layers here that I hope others are able to get into!