That is absolutely great review about the game and I agree on most of it. To be honest I got lost most of the time due to soulless NPCs like you've described perfectly.
They feel.... robotic ? But at the same time plastic. You know what i mean? Like the dolls with cheap rigging. Voice acting is also dull as well. Okay. Major npcs are great for sure. But minor npcs which we find magically appearing when we land 😄 are usually have dead expressions, dead voice acting or out of place acting. It feels like they've collected a lot of things and just put on npcs randomly. Sometimes. Not always. There are amazing acting as well i especially inside the school and main story. 👏🙏🙏