Ain't nobody likin' the jar puzzle.

I feel Chrono Trigger gets pacing best of all. Skies has a lot of trash battles you still have to try hard at or you'll take massive damage. But you're right, it's the best exploration RPGs have ever done. I'm pretty sad there was never a Skies ongoing IP with a few sequels.

Playing roguelikes makes it easier to hop around.

Let's call it an 8. I try to keep an open mind. But if you want to go past "Not as bad as you remember" to "Kind of cool actually" I would start to think our views on the game are simply incompatible. From my standpoint, everything about SwSh was compromised from beginning to end.