This game is designed to piss you off. I genuinely have no idea what they were thinking when they made this. I like playing as zero, I like the story, I like the characters, but everything about the gameplay makes me want to repeatedly bash my head on the wall. Took me 4 hours to complete the game and barely had enough crystals to grow 2 cyber elves, which were utterly useless and couldn't even understand what stat boost they provided me. I frequently wasted my time going in previous area to farm for more crystals but the game barely gives you anything, and the only usefull cyberelves that provides more defense/hp are ridiculously expensive and have TWO tiers of upgrade before you can equip them. Without them bosses kill you in 3 to 4 hits and it's just a miserable experience to go through.

I don't hate the idea of having to grind an arbitrarily amount of currency to buy stat boost instead of just cleverly hiding them in the levels like MMX did but AT LEAST give me more drops and maybe more content to replay so I can actually grind? There is legitimately NOTHING worthwile to do once you're done with the normal missions.

Just play on emulator with save states and savescum your way out of bosses encounter because holy shit this game is BAD

Game starts amazingly good but gets increasingly sour over time and leave you with a bad taste in your mouth.

Spoiler warning ahead so DO NOT read any further if you intend to play it.

I've heard this game is similar to TUNIC in the way it tricks you into believing it's a simple [genre] game (here a platformer) while constantly pulling subtle tricks on you during the entirety of it's playtime, and ultimately ending with a game within a game where you have to solve out-of-the-box meta puzzles. I absolutely ADORE this kind of games, but in my opinion Animal Well fails in that regard with mind bogglingly cryptic puzzles that almost makes no sense and will make you backtrack serval time through every room in the game to look for that one tile that has now become breakable with the new item you just found. Repeat this process every time you find a new one.

Not to say everything is bad about it, the fake ending went rather smoothly and I enjoyed my time with it, and MOST of the "true" ending egg-hunt made sense to me in the way they're solved. Unfortunately it's not solving them that are the problem, but rather finding the puzzle in the first place. A lot of the mysteries that felt satisfying to solve were hidden in plain sight in areas you revisit often, and when you finally notice the subtle clue you feel real good about it. But then there are the bullshit "hit that one tile with that one specific item that's located in that one secret room you never even thought to revisit". Secrets hidden inside secrets that are way off the beaten path. After my 10th revisit of the map I gave up and looked up the placement of the remaining 3 eggs that eluded me.

But that's not the end of it, because despite reaching the "true" ending there are SO MANY of these unsolved mysteries, that you just know there's more. Behold: the secret TRUE ending where you have to find 16 hidden bunnies. This is where the game completely dropped the ball in my opinion.

It starts very nicely with a "tutorial bunny" that clearly visible in the starting area and fairly innocuous to reach. A bit out of the way but all it takes is to get there. Fairly misleading because NO other rabbit is found this way, rather they are the most cryptic puzzles i've ever found in a video game.

There is this one rabbit that requires you to beat the "true" ending, solve an additional puzzle that you might not even realize it's there, then find an hidden room and PRINT OUT A PHYSICIAL PIECE OF PAPER IRL and make an origami out of it, which will give you a secret code. Look i'm not against these meta puzzles but let's be honest here: who actually figured this out completely on their own? Out of the hundred of thousands of players this game will get i don't even think a 100 of them could.

Then you have this one rabbit which ask you to do some very intricate platforming on bubbles, where you must not fall of at any point because "the floor is lava" i guess, from point A to point B that spans serval rooms. Absolutely NOTHING is telegraphed or explained. You just.... have to do that, out of nowhere, for some reason, on a part of the map that's already been traversed countless times and solved, that has seemingly nothing more to offer. But you just HAVE to guess you have to bubble-jump across serval screens and then use the remote near a receiver so you can change the state of a door in the room you started in, and then die so you respawn inside the wall and access the bunny area. What kind of puzzle design is that even? How do you come across this except some sheer luck that you probably couldn't even begin to understand what you even did to trigger that rabbit?

Ok not cryptic enough? What about that one LED panel you can draw on pixel by pixel. You never seem to get any clue on what to draw here. Guess what? turns out when you collect 32 eggs and use the spinny top on a completely unmarked location on the ground, you get one randomized piece of the complete pattern, out of 50 total. It is then your job to go on the internet and tell other players the pattern you got so you can collectively solve the puzzle together.

Look, I get it, ARG type puzzles are popular and can be fun to collectively solve with other people, but the problem with those is that you have exactly one week after the game is released to participate, and then it's solved. You had to be there on release day otherwise you missed out. You will never experience solving those puzzles, and you can't solve them on your own. So all you can do is straight up google the solution and input the secret code in the game, without any thinking or puzzle-solving on your part.

This game hasn't been out for a full month yet and I've already been robbed of the true experience it could have offered, which frankly feels like shit. I spent 8 hours trying to progress anything in this game after reaching one of the endings and most of it was completely wasted time cause there is no way to do it yourself, and looking up hints will straight up show you the full solution.

I usually don't mind having one super cryptic "ULTIMATE" puzzle that requires the collective effort of the internet to solve, but legitimately half of the game's cool content is hidden behind this, and if you're reading this review you're already too late to experience it. I had a great time for the first few hours but now it just feels bitter and sour, I'm ending this playthrough on a bad note.

Guess I should rip the band-aid off: I really want to like this game. Matter of fact, I liked what I've seen so far gameplay-wise and I wish I had the strength to keep going. Unfortunately this game suffers greatly from the unfathomably slow pacing of it's narrative, I've been playing for 60+ hours and nothing much happened in the story, tartarus is becoming increasingly boring and tedious, and I'm being told that I barely reached the halfway point.

I just can't do this. There is only so much of that gameplay loop I can stomach before I just want to move on, and moved on I did.

It's funny how many Final Fantasy storylines boils down to "race war temporarily halted by questionable interspecies sex but ultimately made way worse as a result"

Jokes aside the pacing and narrative is miles ahead of what ARR provided, unfortunately the presentation still feels like a major setback from what the Final Fantasy franchise showed in the last 2 decades. I can catch a glimpse of it's potential here and there but it always leaves me underwhelmed.

A lot of people told me it's one of the best expansion story-wise and I get where they're coming from, but to be frank this is just a retelling of Final Fantasy VI with much less at stake and without what makes FFVI actually enjoyable to play.

A major step in the right direction but we're not quite there yet. Looking forward to the next expansions.

For some reason IV was the only classic Final Fantasy I hadn't finish once in my lifetime yet despite numerous attempt at doing so over the last few decades.

I'm both impressed and underwhelmed by it.
The former because the narrative is as Final Fantasy as it gets, with a lot of unique setpieces that are impressive for a SNES RPG. Especially how every single character's personality shines through their body language. A lot of cutscenes contains absolutely no line of dialog whatsoever, yet you FEEL what's going on so clearly just by seeing these sprites eccentrically spin around, emote and jump.
The later because the game is so short and the pacing is so fast that the most pivotal moments in the story doesn't really hit you like it should. You really have to fill in the blank in your mind and assume these characters have been traveling together for weeks and got to know each other between every location you visit, otherwise it doesn't really make sense why they develop such a sense of camaraderie in the span of 30 minutes.

Despite the game being really short, including the extra optional content, I find it pretty insane that the final boss isn't really doable before reaching lvl 70. I was barely level 50 when I reached the final dungeon, and if it wasn't for the Pixel Remaster 4x exp boost option I would have been stuck mindlessly grinding for hours before I could see the end of it.

Out of all the Final Fantasy games, I think IV is the one that deserve a proper remake the most. It's a shame all the attention goes to VII when the original was already an amazing experience through and through. IV really needs more padding so you have time to build up a meaningful relationship with these characters and feel the weight of every sacrifice made along the way.

Also, I think that games that takes inspiration from Divine Comedy are awesome and we need more of them.

Reviewing each extension separately so this is only a criticism of the content up to the end of A Realm Reborn:

Not gonna lie, I understand why I picked up and dropped this game on 4 separate occasion since 2014: the content of ARR, be it the story, dungeon or side content, is actually horrendous. I'm only sticking with it and powering through it because I know it gets better later on and will be worth my time.

My biggest criticism is that I don't really understand how this rework of 1.0 saved the game and made it popular. I didn't play 1.0 myself back then but the more I learn about it, the more I realize it was a far better game than ARR ever could be. I want FINAL FANTASY god damnit, not "WoW-lite for people that prefers cute aesthetics".

Hopefully I'm done with the worst parts and it will only get better from here on out. I've grown attached to my WoL so I can't stop now.