Robby is correct about the controller.
I've played several thousand hours and have perfected the layout for each job and still it's cumbersome compared to the buttons 'just being there' on a keyboard. It's not designed for controller. It's designed to work on a controller.
When an action-oriented game demands that a thumb be removed from a movement input control in order to input a separate command, it becomes less than effective.
This can and will be alleviated in part by the PS5 pro controller with its back buttons that can stand in for d-pad input. At that time it will be better, but still not ideal.
The crossbar wings are not suitable because they require constant input. Meanwhile, the toggles are restrictive because they often require the removal of a thumb from the movement stick since the shape buttons are usually (but not always) best-served as action inputs leaving little to no space for toggle placement anywhere but d-pad.
If each standard combo had perhaps one fewer branch (both single mob and group mob combinations) then controller becomes somewhat more viable, but doesn't look like that will ever happen....although....SMN is pretty damn close atm.
That said, I'm really lucky with my beloved NIN as I have an absolute stellar hotbar-switching macro that makes mudra a dream and absolute pleasure to not only input, but also manage.
This....of course....is all said within the framework of someone pursuing at least Extreme content. Anything below that and agreeably, no, it does not matter and, yes, a controller can be easily set-up for easy (not optimal) play.
To frame my thoughts, I do Sav content and don't have a problem, but I do recognize that sometimes it would be so, so, so much easier with full access to the buttons if I was smart enough to play on a keyboard, which I am not.
This is entirely unrelated but....it's baffling how much I do not care about the game's story or characters.
I'm not here to say they're uninteresting or boring characters, I want to like them.
But how the game restricts story progress behind the double punch of time-wasting fetch quests [that equate to button pushes because the game doesn't have an open world 'action' system outside jump puzzles] and HORRIFICALLY DIRECTED cut-scenes.
I don't want to unfairly deride anything in the game but the cut-scenes are unwatchable. They are a massacre of human time. It's as if anytime anyone says any line, the camera must cut to a character and each one of them must perform an emote IN ITS ENTIRETY before moving to the next person for yet another generic emote. This is why the only cutscenes I ever watch in the game (not kidding either) are the Manderville things purely bc they have original animations.
I think other than that, when you found Thancred in the wilds one time he actually had something resembling a mo-capped cutscene and that was good too, but everything else is the epitome of time-wasting. Not to mention how every scene, no matter how small or big, has some superfluous scene-establishing camera pan or pans. This is unnecessary because the player has traveled there themself. They know where they are so there's no need to establish a scene for upwards of 10-15 seconds.
Every expansion I tell myself this will be the one I watch the cut-scenes and 12 seconds into an establishing shot I instantly just go back to skipping because it's so absurd and an egregious waste of time.
That said, I do follow the story.
I follow multiple lore accounts and while the lore of the world is interesting, I really do not care about the Scions at all. Except kinda-sorta Estinien. But....that's pretty much because he shuts up most of the time anyway.
Oh, and Emet. That dude f***ing rules. Anytime he opens his mouth I actually feel like listening.
Hang in there, Kierkegaard.
