What's your first impression of Eureka?

[Fyce]

It's now been a bit since Eureka launched. I'm now on Spring Break and can finally grind and get my stuff done. Except I can't. Because Eureka is absolutely abysmal in playing catch up. It's difficult to find a group that wants to chain monsters instead of NM farm. There's nothing fun about being underleveled and waiting for an NM to spawn. I can't find enough friends to form a full party (that are my level). A lot of my friends are already LV20 because they weren't busy with school like me.

You are literally in the worst period for starting Eureka. You missed the first wave, and there are still tons of people who are playing it, preventing you from taking advantage of the scaling system.
The only thing you can do right now is to get with your Lv.20 friends -if some of them are still doing Eureka- and "enjoy" your gold reward in every FATEs they do. Is it fun to get carried like that? Most would say no indeed. But it's either that, or you make a PF before getting in and try to find people like you who'd like to get in and do some low level FATEs/farm.

My first opinion was that Eureka is dreadfully boring. Then, because I didn't play for a while and I got to watch other people play it. It didn't seem bad at all. But now that I'm actually in game trying it out, it's just as dreadful. Eureka's leveling needs an entire overhaul. The level sync can't come fast enough.

It's a glorified relic step, but still a relic step. Most of them were grindy and boring, and some even arguably worse that this one.
Also, you won't get the level sync that you are imagining. What they were talking about was to reduce the elemental level during FATEs so the NMs don't get destroyed by a bunch of synced Lv.20 with 5 magicites.
So, if you can't deal with the grind, either hang on or wait until: 1) less people are doing it, 2) gameplay mechanics are changed a bit (a gamble on how things will get), 3) it gets nerfed (also a gamble, because nothing guarantee that the leveling process will be made easier. They could just nerf it by lowering the prices of the Anemos gear).

Edit: I wanted to add. I really want to like Eureka. This is my first Relic. I was super excited but now I'm sitting here wondering if I'm even gonna be able to do it.

That pretty much sums up every relic step thus far, except for a few exceptions.
One might think that it can only get better... But assumptions like this is quite a dangerous thing to get your hopes on. This step might very well be the best and easiest we'll get when it comes to Eureka gear. Who knows.

Edit 2: There's absolutely no reason to lock mounts in Eureka behind LV17. None.

It's so you can't outrun enemies easily, making "exploring" harder than if you had access to them. It also serves as a pacing tool, just like the winds you need to collect to fly in the open world since Heavensward. Or even like the chocobo mount being locked behind MSQ for new payers. 'Not saying that it's a good or bad reason, just that there's one.
You can still hop on a 2-person mount from someone in your party though (but monsters will still want to get you if your pilot goes near them).