The optimal way to experience this game is not at all, the second most is to play for the first few hours and stop forever once you realize the rest of the game is the same reskinned enemies and quests. There are around 26 unique non boss enemies- the bestiary has 100 non boss entries. That might not sound so bad but it gets exhaustively tedious over the course of the 80-100 hours you'll spend on this game depending on how much of a completionist you're trying to be.

This game did a really good job getting you excited for it in the trailers and in the first few hours of the game, but the quality soon falls off really hard, to the point where I only beat the game so that I could say I did- I was skipping any fights I didn't have to take and I couldn't be bothered to do any more of the increasingly repetitive sidequests.

The game looks beautiful, and the characters are great on their own, but the writing of this game is so over the top anime after school special that you WILL grow to hate them all unless you are simping. It was really cool at first when the characters had dynamic responses and conversations in the middle of fights, but then you quickly realize they will be saying that for longer than you thought, with almost no new lines- to the point where two characters will say the same line as they did in the beginning of the game allllll the way to the end. How many months of travel do these characters need together until Main Character 1 stops asking Main Character 2 why she's healing him *uWu* ?

The features, like fishing, and having a farm... are present. The game throws a bunch of new stuff at you before pretty much all at once and then nothing for the whole second half of the game, and then you'll realize that those features are very shallow. This whole game is just a kiddie pool the size of the sea.

Tales of Arise, more like- Tales of Unalive (myself)

Just go play Tales of Symphonia or something, unless you really just like Tsundere I guess.

P.S. This game had day one DLC