When you say padded, do you mean like most anime where they just add unnecessary conflict to fill out the story, or was it more like extra steps to get to the main story?

The one thing I didn’t enjoy so much from 1 was the way each story followed the exact same arch.

That’s a fair point. The narrative was very much a choose your own adventure with mostly interchangeable parts.

I enjoyed it for those reasons, though, because it gave me the feeling of old FF games when players got to decide completely on party makeup. I thought it was nice that I could get my chosen team to level 60 and then just blaze through the characters I hated and focus on what I wanted to do.

Played through 1, still need to go fight the

Hoping 2 and 0 are worth it because 1 was a nice return to retro gaming style and so easy to pickup and put down.