Super late to the party, but I finally played the game. I was waiting for the performance mode to be improved/fixed, but seeing that they made no changes even with the DLC release, I just gave up on it. And honestly, it was nowhere near as bad as I expected (I thought it'd be Jedi Survivor level of awfulness). Lot of frame drops during exploration and you could tell the resolution was low, but overall it didn't bother me too much. Framerate was solid during the fights and that's what mattered the most to me.
Given what I had been hearing those past six months, I honestly wasn't sure I would like it. The comparison with Game of Thrones particularly bothered me (because I hate GoT), and honestly, other than the tone being a bit more mature than in previous entries, it totally felt like Final Fantasy to me. Much more than XII and XV did. The main plot was even about killing God, it doesn't get more Japanese than that
Although I play games mostly for the story, the beginning was a bit tedious, it felt like I was playing five minutes and then watching cutscenes for 15 minutes, over and over again. This went on for around 10 hours, and then thankfully the game opened up a bit more, and by the end you had a ton of side stuff to do. First side-quests were lame but the last ones were pretty good and added to the story.
Gameplay was pretty nice. I used the cheat ring that prompts you to press R1 because I could never really tell which attack could hit me or not. I could have probably gotten by without it, but I wasn't looking for a challenge. Pretty much never used potions as a result.
Really loved the story. It really felt like a Final Fantasy story to me, with a lot of likable characters and quite a bit of romance. Clive and Jill are in the top 3 FF couple to me. Focusing on Eikon/summons was a great idea, and they've really done them justice. Ifrit has pretty much always been a beginner's summon (even the tutorial boss in FFVIII) so it was nice to have him be the MC. I think most people would have chosen Bahamut instead, who is by far the most popular.
Graphics were a mixed bag. Sometimes the game could look gorgeous, and sometimes ugly. I wasn't a fan of the decision to cloud the sky for the entire last third of the game. It made every area look worse, especially the desert which was gorgeous when the sun was up.
Where the game impressed though is definitely the boss fights. They are the most spectacular I've seen this generation, sometimes I couldn't even believe my eyes. So many visual effects used it was crazy. I also enjoyed how over the top and hot blooded they were, I was sometimes thinking to myself this game was actually a battle shounen. Favorite were Titan and Bahamut, with a preference for the latter.
It took me a while, but I'm really glad I played it. IMO it should have been nominated for GOTY instead of Spider-man 2 (which was solid but that's about it) for the boss fights alone.
Pondering whether to buy the DLC or dive into GOW Valhalla now.