This makes me feel bad, because I like the game despite its flaws and never once called it a masterpiece. Maybe you're partially at fault for buying into the idea that any game could ever be revered as a true masterpiece. Think about games that are considered the best of the best (shit like Ocarina of Time, Final Fantasy VII, Dark Souls, etc) and then actually go play those games, and most of the time you'll find that even though they might range from okay to even great titles, they typically are not without flaws whatsoever, and it can be quite easy to pick these games apart and ultimately find ways in which they could be improved. The type of people who claim "X is the best game ever" are likely the type of people whose repertoire of general gaming experience is quite limited from the outset.
Anyway, for people who are interested in this game, I say you pirate it and check it out before you make a purchase. It's strange that the Steam version doesn't offer a demo when the console version's demo is still available today. It features some great combat and a variety of monsters to fight. This is the game's main selling point. If you want to fight dragons, ogres, cyclops, golems, chimeras, griffins, hydras, wights, skeletons, bandits, goblins, and various other monstrosities in a pseudo MMO fantasy setting, then this game is for you.
No game is perfect and this game is no exception. The story's not that great, but not terrible, and you won't really be able to make deep and impacting decisions that alter the course of your personal playthrough. It has RPG elements like leveling up, vocations, stats, weapon and item management, crafting, and a basic party system, but it's more like an action game than an RPG. You're going to spend the majority of your time killing monsters and exploring dungeons. This can be fun, but you shouldn't expect anything else. That's it. There are quests you can accomplish, some of which offer basic choices that allow you to make basic decisions, but major quests will all be entirely the same for everyone. The pawns can be brain dead, especially those generated by the game, so if you want a competent party, you need to train your own pawn yourself and then acquire pawns that have been trained well by other players. The game does not explain the steps that you must take if you want to train your pawn in practical terms, so you must search the internet for this information yourself. You cannot give pawns direct commands, and instead your input is boiled down to a few simplistic commands like "GO!" "Come!" and "I need help!".
I could go on and on about the game's various flaws and talk about what could be done to improve them, but fuck that. I just wanted to point out that even though the game might be hailed as "the greatest shit ever", and that you might not personally like it, it's still a decent game worth playing for some people.