As an addendum to that point about Rey hearing Force Ghosts, Anakin's quote wound me up.

He said something along the lines of "Rey, restore the balance, like I did!"

But... Palpatine's alive, with a seemingly BIGGER armada all armed with mini-Death Star lasers, and everything achieved by Anakin's sacrifice led to absolutely nothing, beyond bringing Han and Leia together, inspiring their son to commit mass atrocities in his name, and later have a change of heart. What balance did he restore, exactly?

well Anakin has always been a bitch with an over inflated sense of self worth.

I completely agree that it was two movies smashed together though. I feel like what was intended was for the 8th movie to have Rey and Kylo chasing each other and fighting. With Kylo becoming Ben again in the final act. Then ep.9 would have been the pair of them fighting to stop Palpatine. Instead this played out in a single movie.

I really would have liked to see Ben Solo more and that is my biggest issue with how it all finished.

The final battle. It was really cool and tense up until Lando arrived with hundreds, if not thousands of reinforcements.

Then we, well, I, didn’t get to see enough of that brawl. And I’d have liked more screen time for the gathered fleet, so I could see what ships are there.

Also glad my suspicion was correct and the threat of ‘Action 3PO’ was a deliberate misdirection.

Indeed, but 3PO and never been funnier or more endearing than in this one.

I also found the chemistry between Fin, Poe and Rey to be awesome.

If I had to pin down anything I was disappointed by, it would be the lack of manifestations of Force Ghost Anakin and Obiwan. The final confrontation between Rey and Palps might have been just that much better if Hayden Christensen made a physical appearance to help finally take him down.

This is more to do with my experience in X-Wing and the frankly superb Rogue Squadron series of games.

When Rey is piloting Luke’s X-Wing to go stab up Palpatine? Her S-Foils are deployed.

Also, Ben Solo ( for that is who arrives at that point) found a TIE in decent condition. Though it’s my understanding pre-First Order TIE’s didn’t have hyperdrive. If they’d just made it a TIE Defender, I’d have been stupid excite.

But minor issues. Nothing the average cinema goer is gonna know nor care about

-The Rise of Skywalker gives us the same conclusion we alrady had in Return of the Jedi - the (same exact) evil Emperor and his dark cult is overthrown and killed (again), his evil Empire is militarily defeated (if not outright destroyed), the young Jedi disciple overcomes their inner demons to become a true Jedi Knight destined to train the next generation of new, presumably better, Jedi, and a new era of peace and prosperity is ushered in. Sure there are minor details that are different, particularly in terms of who that Jedi is, etc. but in the grand scheme of things those small details are ultimately irrelvant in the narrative sense. The Force Awakens reversed the character development and narrative progress made in Return of the Jedi seemingly so that The Rise of Skywalker could give us the same ending with different new and improved Disney-approved characters instead. We spent 5 years and 3 films essentially watching the narrative travel in a big circle to end up right back in the same status quo we had following the release of The Return of the Jedi in 1983. This is not the "satisfying conclusion to the Skywalker Saga" that was being advertised - the Skywalker Saga didn't need a satisfying conclusion because it already had that in Return of the Jedi that wrapped up everything that needed to be wrapped up from the previous 5 films (even if 3 of those films weren't made until years later) - instead this is the third film in a trilogy that served only to act as a soft reboot of the setting and the narrative. There will no doubt be sequels to this movie, perhaps they will not receive the honor of an episodic title, or maybe they will, but I have no doubt we will see many more EU/Legends stories brought forward and reimagined with Finn, Rey, Poe and others filling the same roles that Luke, Han, and Leia once did.
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-On that note, I'm not sure that I can find anything satisfying about the implications involved in having a descendant of Sheev Palpatine outlive the Skywalker bloodline, even if she does take up their name and renounce her heritage. This is the "Doesn't matter, had sex" victory of the Star Wars saga, and Palpatine is exactly the kind of guy who would get his jollies knowing that the Skywalkers went extinct while his own bloodline gets to continue on, even if his granddaughter does pretend that he doesn't exist. To me, thats unsatisfying.
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-The Rise of Skywalker solidifies Rey as a textbook "Mary Sue", not because shes "too powerful", not because she "never fails", but because she gets to do all the cool things, have all the cool character traits, possess all the cool gear and equipment, have the cool backstory, have all the coolest friends, have the cool legacy, etc. Just off the top of my head, she gets to keep the Millennium Falcon, she inherits Luke and Leias lightsabers (plus builds her own), she gets BB-8 from Poe apparently, presumably she also inherits R2 and C-3PO, she gets to fly Lukes X-Wing, she gets to kill Palpatine (for real this time, sorry Anakin), she's descended *from* Palpatine so she gets to claim descent from one of the most powerful and most evil force users in history while being an absolute good-hearted hero herself, she's apparently a second Chosen One, she gets to re-establish the Jedi Order and train the next generation of better Jedi, etc. In the process she completely upstages the protagonists of the previous two trilogies by accomplishing what they did not or could not (and in many cases, accomplishing what we thought they had accomplished but surprisingly found out that they didn't). Rey is basically the character that I - and every other kid on the block - pretended to be when we were kids playing pretend or writing our gakky fanfic, the character that is equal parts Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Lando Calrissian, etc, the character that gets mentored by your heroes and is best friends with them and wins their admiration and respsect. She is the ultimate wish-fulfillment character, and literally everything that Paula Smith railed against when she created the concept of Mary Sue. An important distinction needs to be made here - this is not the characters fault, its the writers.
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-Palpatines return is out of left field - there is no real hint, lead-up, or build-up to it in the previous two films (mainly because, per JJs own admission, they didn't entirely figure that part out until later), or for that matter any of the other films beforehand. Thats not to say it doesn't work (actually I found the Palpatine segments to be the most compelling, dark, and sinister looks at the setting thus far in the franchise - if JJ/RJ had given us this from the get-go then I think this would have made for a masterwork trilogy that would have been far less divisive and far more intereting than the one we received), but it needed more of a connection than just repeating the "The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural..." quote from Revenge of the Sith. Its actually ironic that this is the path they chose to go down considering Kathleen Kennedy tried to tell us that they didn't have any source material to work from, its a riff on a classic EU/Legends narrative, one which many EU fans explicitly hated and were glad to see gone.
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From a narrative standpoint, Palpatines return has many problems. At the time those EU novels were published, before the prequels and the introduction of Anakin Skywalkers character arc, the Chosen One prophecy, and the idea of his redemption, etc. bringing Palpatine back made some sense, it was actually an idea spawned from George Lucas's own notes and outline for one of the possible story arcs for the sequel trilogy (say what you will about The Maker, but I owe the man much of my childhood and early youth. Maintaining the integrity of his vision will always be of paramount importance to me and one of the key measures of the quality of any narrative for me), and would have served as a reasonable continuation of Lukes own character arc - some people like to dispute this, as overcoming his inner darkness was a key part of the his character arc in the OT, however his temporary fall to the dark side in the EU was a result of his hubris, he intentionally chose to serve the Clone Emperor thinking that he could remain pure and destroy the dark side from within, but was overcome by it regardless because its corrupting influence was more than what he was able to handle. In any case, after the prequel trilogy, a "return of Palpatine" arc becomes problematic as Anakin is the Chosen One who restored balance by killing Palpatine (and in turn Lukes narrative arc also takes on slightly different importance, as his overcoming his inner darkness becomes Anakins legacy in atonement for "the sins of the father" - that isn't entirely relevant to *this* film, but it is relevant to other films in the trilogy).
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Beyond that, the decision to bring Palpatine back also has implications for the prequels - it was long understod that Palpatine was using the story of Darth Plagueis as bait to lure Anakin to the dark side with the promise that he would be able to save others, specifically Padme, from death. It was also long understood that on some level, it was a lie. Palpatine tells Anakin, "Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew, then his apprentice killed him in his sleep." - the apprentice, of course, is Palpatine himself (confirmed within canon) - but later on he tells him "To cheat death is a power only one has achieved, but if we work together, I know we can discover the secret." Clearly both statements cannot be true, which means one of them is a lie, and it has been long understood that the lie was that Sidious did *not* know how to cheat death (and there is a possible argument that Plagueis was likewise unable to do so, hence why Sidious was able to kill him), which is why he needed Anakin in the first place - as he was basically force-jesus, he would be able to accomplish what Sidious could not. Anakins defeat at the hands of Obi-Wan robbed Palpatine of this asset, as Vader would never be as strong in the force as he was before, which is why Palpatine needed to turn Luke to the dark side as Vaders replacement - Luke was strong enough to accomplish what Vader could not, but Luke never turned, so Palpatine would have been completely denied the means to achieve his goal.
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Bringing Palpatine back from the dead, therefore, continues the complaint that many fans (myself included) had in that the sequel films (primarily The Force Awakens, but also The Rise of Skywalker) do not honor or respect the legacy of the original and prequel trilogies by reversing or ignring both plot/narrative and character development. I suspect the reason George didn't appear at the Rise of Skywalker premier is precisely because Palpatine was brought back in the film, which was something we know George was vehemently against per his own statements. Ian Mcdiarmid has also mentioned in interviews that he approached George on the subject on at least one occasion, and he wouldn't even entertain the topic, saying Palpatine was very very dead and would not be coming back. Thus, my take on it is that any restoration of Palpatine is, in essence, a direct violation of the established narrative and weakens (if not outright destroys) the significance of many of the events in the previous two trilogies.

-By extension, in some ways the events of The Rise of Skywalker has implications for Anakins story - I'm still not sure if those implications are good or bad, but in essence Ben giving his life force over to her to bring her back from the dead raises some questions about Anakin's own fall to the dark side. Is it made more tragic, because he didn't have to slaughter a temple full of younglings to save Padme if he was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for her instead? Or is it made pointless, because as it turns out Sidious was wrong and any Jedi could gain the knowledge to save the ones he loves from dying without turning to the dark side?
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​-As a quick aside, it really sucks for Qui-Gon that Obi-Wan apparently didnt know how to use the force to heal people.

-The film also continues JJ Abrams "shrinking" of the Star Wars galaxy through his abuses of hyperspace (sidenote: a "People for the Ethical Treatment of Hyperspace" type meme campaign might be fun). Early on in A New Hope we are told "Traveling through hyperspace isn't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?" Early on in The Rise of Skywalker we are treated to the concept of "hyperspace-skipping" which is basically just random jumps in random directions for random distances, which sees the Falcon hop through a bunch of random environments, often in far-too-close proximity to something that should destroy them. For a long time one of the tents of hyperspace travel was that you can't jump too close to a planet because it casts a "mass shadow" into hyperspace which will cause a hyperspace collision destroying one or both objects. this is still suppsed to be technically true in canon (and was in fact a rule established by George Lucas early on because he realized that it would lead to a potential can of worms in the narrative sense to allow it to be used freely from anywhere at any time), yet JJ Abrams continues to ignore it. What then, was the point of running the Trade Federation blockade in The Phantom Menace if Amidala and co could have jumped to lightspeed from Naboos atmosphere? What was the point of those Rebel Transports having to risk destruction by Star Destroyers while escaping from Hoth if they could have just jumped from Hoths atmosphere? What was the point of the countless other canonical intances where a ship has to run the gauntlet through space to make it to or from a planet while under fire when they could just as easily jump to/from a planets atmosphere. Everyone complains about The Holdo Maneuver from TLJ making other stories problematic (which JJ Abrams thankfully addresses in TROS with a "Thats a one in one million probability of success" throwaway line), maybe they should be complaining about this one too.

-That being said, everything about the Emperor and Exogol was amazing both visually and thematically. I hate that the Emperors reanimation presents a narrative challenge to the rest of the saga (maybe it would have worked better if it was Plagueis?), and I hate that it was a last minute insert into the trilogy. If only this is what they had lead off with in The Force Awakens. I definitely wanted to explore this planet and the idea of a broken Sith corpse on alchemical life support further.

-The main duel on the Death Star ruins is incredible. Its the most realistic sword fight in the entire franchise, lacking the flashiness and unnecessary embellishment of the prequel duels, and instead opting for the slower paced battles of the original trilogy, with better choreography and better trained actors in an incredible snd dramatic environment.

Thats exactly what we got though. Instead of one really big ship though we get hundreds (if not thousands) of smaller ones (fun fact, they are "Xyston-class Star Destroyers, that look almost exactly like Imperial I-class Star Destroyers but are about 800 meters longer) capable of doing the same thing. Its basically the distributed/cloud computing equivalent of the Death Star.

First Order TIE fighters have had hyperdrives since The Force Awakens, non-film canon makes it clear that this was because The First Order identified it as a military shortcoming of The Empire.

The planet the Death Star wreckage ends up on is in the Endor system (this is explained in the film), its one of the other 9 or 10 moons around the gas giant Endor, makes perfect sense in that case that wreckage and debris would have ended up there - while the piece of the Death Star that ended up on the planet was by my estimation far too large, the station was far from "vaporized". And Kylo absolutely was beating Rey in that duel, he forced her saber down to the ground with his on top, she was in the position of weakness and at that point in the film I was like "how the feth does he not end up killing Rey right here, right now" - thats when Leia comes in and he drops his guard and she gets up and stabs him. Its actually, in my opinion, the best and most realistic lightsaber duel in the entire saga.