I have a real fondness for XV despite everything (maybe I just love the fishing minigame), but man does the game have flaws.

Not only are there pacing issues in the story, but a huge problem was trying to go too big and spreading the story too thin, which really diminishes the strength of XV itself as a standalone product. The story really needs all the supplementary products (some of which never got made, like the Lunafreya DLC), and even then the official DLCs aren't even seamlessly integrated into the base game! You have to take breaks from the main story to play the DLCs at the appropriate time, and that's not even getting into the tie-in movie and graphic novel and I forget what else. It's a bit of a mess.

Still, I agree with you, there are some lovely personal interactions between the gang, and I did end up really just enjoying travelling around with them (even despite the open world quests themselves being mostly dull as dirt).