As someone who played the first and bought it again and again multiple times, here's how I see it.
The first game was intended as an Elder Scrolls killer. By that, I mean it had many aspects of oblivion, plus an amazing combat that was effortlessly cinematic without any quick time events. The world had certain random events that could happen, and it's also the only RPG with realistic and dangerous nights, so you hand to know what you are doing. It also had an amazing story that starts of simple and grounded, and like most Japanese games, it got to involve gods and multiverses at the end. It also had other mechanics like the Pawn system that offered asynchronous multiplayer, and an invisible affection system where the NPC you liked the most will appear in the final chapters, all that among other smart hidden mechanisms.
However!
While all those sound good, the budget and time didn't match the ambition. The game screems incomplete from all aspects, with the story making a nosedive in the middle sending you to generic quests for the majority of the middle, all roads end in gates you will never open, the affection mechanic was bugged, offted choosing merchants you often shopped from as beloved, while other desired NPCs left the game to early to compete, and generally the majority of the game being (or becoming with grinding) easy enough to not encourage any strategy from the player before the end-game, where all the mechanics shined. It didn't help that the generation of consoles could barelly run it, having the game run in pittyfull frames and with black borders on the screen. It also released near Skyrim, so nuf said.
Those who played, and eventually Capcom realized the pottential of the game, and released an expansion that offered a well put together end-game dungeon with high enough difficulty that allowed the fantastic combat to shine, and was dearly beloved for that!
Later the game got re-released on newer consoles and PC with the expansion and minor fixes, alloing it to run on hardware that can actually support it, and people slowlly began descovering it's pottential.
It was a slow acceptance, and the PC version has a big modding comunity, dispite the game being designed very counter productivelly when it comes to mods.
The announcement of a proper sequel means a game that would allow the pottential to shine.