I gave up on it really quickly as well. I finished the first area, which is the one they kept showing over and over and over....and over, in their press releases, trailers, etc, with Cindy, and the American Southwest vibe. The world design is fucking terrible, as expected, since it follows the modern mantra of "make it big and open to give the illusion of content" instead of condensing content into smaller areas which the series has been known for since the 80's.
There were 3 dungeons that I recall finding in that first area alone - 1 was a cave, which you're forced to do, and is the 'tutorial' dungeon so to speak. Was fairly straight forward, no major twists, turns, or shortcuts. It also had you loop around once or twice, with extra monsters appearing after your loop, which I did NOT like. It was an excuse to try and give you B-horror jump-scares instead of an actual creepy dungeon crawl. It also had an extra door that was closed off until storyline purposes (not that far in advance), but was a bit of a bummer when I found it on my own while exploring. The second dungeon was an abandoned mine shaft that was actually better designed. There were 3 floors, and the elevator was at the start. You could start on any of the 3 levels, and they would eventually connect to one another at the same point. Enemy placement and variety was pretty much nonexistent, though. Much like the first dungeon, it was just groups and groups of Level 1 Goblins, 'till you reach the boss...and then whoops, it's a level 70 Samurai who Iai Strikes your dick and balls for 7,000 when you have like 600 HP. The third and final dungeon I found in the first area was a sewer access that looked like it was gonna have light puzzle action with some power grids you needed to turn on, flowing down water pipes and the like, but enemies were all level 30+ and were basically unkillable with the shit I had equipped. I could stay alive fairly reliably through good use of dodging and warping, but my bros were just getting annihilated and it wasn't worth the time, frustration, and consumable healing spamming to try and press on and kill them.
After searching the first area, it already became rote - finally decide to do the story quest, kill a boss, watch disjointed, shitty cutscenes, unlock a second area that is quadruple the size of the first, and rinse and repeat. Also, once you complete a certain story quest in the first area, enemy soldiers will be flying above your ahead in airship carriers, and will be attacking you NON-STOP, and are more painful and annoying than monsters double their level. It took the random encounter business of earlier games, and magnified the problems, because you could see them coming, couldn't avoid the actual encounter no matter what, then had to spend an unnecessarily ridiculous amount of time physically running the other way to avoid them. Then, you'd probably lose your place in the generically shit open world map and spend another 5 minutes walking towards your destination.
Magic was used via consumable items, and made via a crafting system. Like most crafting systems, it sucked. You would literally combine raw elemental ore with garbage like bird feet, dog bones, and cat shit to create marginally different spells, such as Fire with a poison effect, Fire with a slow regen effect on you and your allies, lightning that could backfire and shit on you and your bros, or a doublecasted Ice spell. I used a Triple Casted Lightning spell, and didn't notice it actually cast three times, it just did marginally more damage than a normal lightning spell. REALLY disappointing, but again, I didn't play all that long. Maybe someone else who actually played it to the end can shed some light and hope on it.
I ended up quitting shortly after reaching the second area, because the game was incomplete, and they were working on adding features, and fixing problematic later spots. Figured if I were going tio play it, I may as well play a finished product as I could tell I wasn't going to play it twice. As it turns out, I simply don't have it in me to follow quest markers on a little map in a corner in an otherwise huge, empty zone. After stopping for a day or two, I had NO desire to pick the game up again. It was your typical dime a dozen, 'AAA' open-world, sandbox, visceral combat, buzzword-laden mess of a game that plagues gaming nowadays. To be completely honest, the dungeon crawl was actually kinda fun, but was too sparse that it wasn't worth playing through the whole damn game, its shitty soap opera story, and boring fetch quests to experience it. If you own a ps4 already, there are enough options to scratch the JRPG itch you may have. Bloodborne, Nioh, Persona 5, and (presumably, as I haven't played it yet) NieR: Automata. Pretty sure I've seen you post quite a bit in the thread for the latter, so I assume you've played it.