I just started this too! Agreed on all fronts. It’s gorgeous, the combat is refined and a combination of a lot of great old-school JRPG mechanics, I like all the winks and tongue-in-cheek mentions of classic tropes. I was just really hoping the story wasn’t going where I thought it was going. But now that I have gotten a certain bit in, it feels like it’s going exactly where I think it’s going. But it’s such a self-aware game that I hope I’m wrong. Because you’re right, the characters are actually likeable and do at times subvert tropes, blatantly even like they know we expected them to behave a certain way. Fingers crossed.