Absolutely despise Chadley. He's actively a detriment to my enjoyment of the game. Every non-main story activity involves him pecking Cloud's head with his inane, nondescript dialogue every 10 seconds, and it's affecting the pacing when he's ringing you every time you find something interesting on the world map. Then he has the audacity to give me a performance review when I ignore him. "Sorry Cloud, I notice that intel gathering has slowed down". What you gonna do, fire me from doing you favours? Fuck off.
I do like this game a lot but there's a fair amount of Ubisoft-ification here. A shit load of map markers and busywork, most of which doesn't feel particularly rewarding upon completion. Scanning 4 crystals to make a VR summon fight easier? Scanning a lifestream fountain to get lore on the area? You could get by on just doing the protorelic quests, dangerous fiend encounters and excavating for treasure.
Not trying to be a hater but I dunno; this doesn't need to be a 100 hour game. Remove half the annoying mini-games (Tifa's crunches can absolutely get in the bin), condense the amount of busywork on the world map and reduce the amount of pointless dialogue, and you'd have a genuine GOTY contender and possible all-timer. Square are clearly very good at expanding spaces that are actually lived in; Kalm, Junon and Costa Del Sol are all absolutely phenomenal locales and I've enjoyed spending times at these locations more than I have the actual open world.
