I think tales of graces f... Is bad?

Please, before you down vote me to shit, let me explain.

I personally play games for two reasons. #1 being gameplay. Gameplay is king to me. #2 being story and it's a far #2. I really care mostly about gameplay.

But it seems graces f has neither???

My first two tales games were Symphonia and abyss, but which have great gameplay and story to me. I like the older style combat, A to attack + directions for variations and B for special moves. It's like smash Bros. you can do combos like fighting games and try to optimize to make them infinite combos with the right amount of effort and team comp. LOVE the old combat.

Also exploration, in both you get a big map and can explore even places outside the intended story path and there's tons of secret to find. I also think the dungeons/temples whatever are much more flesh out in Symphonia/abyss and actually have decent puzzles that aren't braindead.

Graces f just feels like it's holding my hand.. the game is super linear, just run from one place to the next in long hallways.

The combat feels limited, the CC system seems clunky. And I don't really get the difference between A and B arts. Aside from sheathing to heal a bit between combos, I just spam the same two artes alternating to try and stun lock the enemies.

The story.... Holy fuck this story is ass. Everything is so predictable, it's super weird pacing. Like in the first three acts. Asbel goes from Knight, leaving knights to joining Richard and being dedicated, then being betrayed in a very forced and weird way after Richard is king. It's all very poorly paced and poorly written.

Nothing about this game is good so far. I'm 10 hours in and struggling to finish.