It's good, but has issues. Team AI is dumb as shit, often just sitting on the field doing nothing. It makes it VERY hard to have characters run interference so you can do long range set ups. For a game that had a Front/Back system, they sure as hell have ai controlled characters do whatever the fuck they want.
Honestly it's not a problem until a certain boss
, it's actually quite fun to play the game as a lesser DMC styled game for most of it. But when enemies start ignoring blockstun, require fine tuned strategies, or are surrounded by adds so you can't have a meaningful 1v1, the combat system starts showing it's ass.
But it's still better than I imagined, and with a few revisions, I would be happy to play another mainline FF game in this style.
You can turn the free movement in DQXI off. I would happily turn the free movement off in this game, it adds nothing.
It adds a TON. With deadly dodge and elemental materia, I played the first 60% of the game like a low tier character action game. Other than some funky hitboxes, it was a ton of fun, though I felt like a lot of the early enemies couldn't keep up with the idea of where the combat system was trying to go.
But man, free movement in this game is a game changer. If you aren't dipping, dodging, parrying, counterhitting, counterparrying, you're playing the game wrong.