A surprisingly pretty fun little re-imagining/prequel to the O.G. Final Fantasy. The combat system is 100% the best part of the entire experience, with so many levels of customization made possible by a wide range of job classes, weapons and abilities. You can fine-tune so much of your experience that it's honestly a little overwhelming, but it's great fun to mess around with different builds and move-sets to find what works for you.

The game is very challenging, which is something you'll either love or hate. I personally put the difficulty down just to get through it a little easier because the one bad thing about the entire game is the story and characters. For the vast majority of the runtime, the characters are uninteresting and the story is boilerplate nonsense. It's only really the last handful of missions where the story becomes good and the characters start to shine through, and you get the whole picture of what the game was going for. It would have been much better if the story had been reworked a little bit more to make the overall experience more enjoyable because honestly, the combat solo carries until the very end of the game.

I also didn't complete the "Bahamut" trials or whatever, because I just have no interest in grinding for better equipment and replaying the entire game again. It already took me 30 hours to get through it once, so much like the endgame of Middle Earth: Shadows of War, I just left it.
Overall though, this was a good experience. It's not going to blow you away in any way, but it's a very solid action game akin to Nioh, and you get a nice payoff for seeing it through to the end if you're a fan of the Final Fantasy series. I honestly wouldn't mind a complete remake of FF I & II with this combat style, but just keeping to their original plot lines.

Lots of mixed feelings here during the actual playthrough, but it ends up working out in the end.

First things first, play this on PS5 (I hear the PC version is screwed as well), I only played this on PS4 because I started it there and my stubborn ass wanted to finish it there. You do get used to the framerate issues but it really hurts the game when the bosses and enemies as a whole are acting as they should be and it feels like you're dropping inputs or getting stuck in weighty animations. It's possible to get used to the performance, but it's a pain in the ass when you're dealing with it at first.

The gameplay is obviously the highlight here, it's Team Ninja's current ARPG formula done for the Final Fantasy universe. It's a bit more streamlined than Nioh, your level is determined by your gear and your level-up limit is determined by jobs. My personal favorite weapon classes are greatsword and "katana" (heads up: it should be called "odachi" because it's on the slower and weightier side). There is a decent amount of depth here, the soul shield defensive mechanic has a lot of perks, like being able to steal one-time magic spells from enemies and being a dedicated counter (at the cost of stamina). There is a parry mechanic as well, and a proper parry blocks an attack without costing stamina (it also has an automatic counter attack with the fist weapons, it might have other uses with weapon classes but I haven't messed too much with them). The combat loop is pretty fun, I'd say it's a bit of a halfway point between Nioh and Dark Souls.

Enemy variety is a bit of a downside, there aren't too many unique types and they'll feel overdone by the last third of the game. It reminds me of Nioh 1, but thankfully it's a much shorter game so it isn't a complete deal breaker. Bosses are incredibly challenging but a definitely a highlight (in spite of the mentioned performance issues), thankfully you can unlock side missions to fight most of them 1 on 1 so it makes learning them super fun and viable.

The story is MUCH better than expected. Everybody knows the "kill Chaos lol" meme, but it ends up being much better written than I ever expected it to be. Jack is the star of the show, having a very no-BS attitude with every side character for 90% of the game and it is wildly entertaining. His dynamic with the rest of the characters, without spoiling too much, does open up by the end. Let's just say it's a treat for fans of FF1.

I'd normally go for this game's DLC, but apparently it's locked behind super hard difficulties. It also comes with a super easy mode to make them bareable if you don't have the skill, which really begs the question why they didn't just let you play it on any difficulty. Probably going to pass on this, sadly.

This game had a pretty bad first impression on me but it ended up growing on me a lot. I think I'll keep playing this for a little bit, but it has me itching to return to Nioh 2 (it's definitely tempting since I've been playing Final Fantasy for more than a straight month). It's definitely got its flaws, but if you can look passed them you'll be in for a fun ride.

8/10

My favourite game of all time bar none. Extremely fun, diverse combat which shines due to its job systems, build variety and creation of those builds. Just extremely fun to play. And the plot, while aimless at the beginning half, admittedly stumbles into being quite special during the end and the DLC content, it's an emotional heartfelt end. The characters are likeable. In some cases extremely, with Jack and his cheesy lines and one notedness looping back around to being endearing. Actually my favourite character in a game ever. While the game is marred with technical issues and extreme difficulty balance issues in the DLCs. I can't help but rate this game 5 stars for how enjoyable the gameplay, plot, characters and general feel around the game. The passion and love you can tell that went into this project and its DLCs from Team Ninja is intoxicating When you become as Jackpilled (arguably mentally deranged) as i have become since i finished this game last year, this game becomes impossible to forget. Despite the length of this review, i truly dont feel like my review here gives justice to the absolute love I have for this game, just so so much love. Truly nothing comes close