This review contains spoilers
Stunning visual spectacle. Phenomenal soundtrack. A great story (albeit with some pacing issues) with pretty cool characters. I love how it takes Final Fantasy's classic summons and makes them such a crucial plot point. And though all the lore and different relationships, factions, kingdoms etc can be hard to keep up with, the game does an amazing job at keeping the player up to date by having encyclopedias, a relationship chart and world map that shows the current status of every area at any given point, and you can check these at the various points of the story to see how they evolved. In the middle of a cutscene you can even check information about relevant people, places, items or concepts.
So what's the problem? Well everything I've been praising isn't really a good game. It's more of a great show. The actual gameplay stuff in the game is average at best and horrible at its worst.
Firstly the combat, which is the least offensive part. It's very fluid, fast paced and satisfying. It does fall short in the sense that it's a lot more shallow than it might initially seem. Combined with the fact enemies are massive damage sponges, you just kind of repeat the same 2 or 3 combos over and over and over and over. Never having to think or focus on the fight because you do it so much it's just second nature to input the few different button commands. The only reason you even switch things up is for that little bit of variety, because there's no difference between strategies or techniques, nothing you can do to better defeat one enemy from another, it's just mindlessly mashing away at those same button sequences. When a move comes off cool down you use that to get a bit of extra damage, but the majority of special moves do just that, a bit of damage and you wait for it to cool down again. There's a couple of moves that have a little more thought put in to them, like ones that are made to counter, or ones that require you to hold the button for a little longer and release at the right time for a bit of extra power, which is still so minimal of an interaction it's barely worth mentioning. Almost none of the moves seem to synergise with each other, I can think of maybe one (the Ramuh one that spawns a ball) that directly benefits from specific other moves (in this cases ones that do multiple hits at once, like Bahamut's ultimate move). All others are just a case of "Use this one, then the next one, then the next one".
Weirdly despite summons being a key plot point here, elemental weaknesses and resistances are absent. It's like they purposefully dumbed things down to the point where no choices you make in combat or build matter at all. What's weird about this is that the game makes a point to say Eikons you equip will change your basic energy attack. But why? They all do the same power, there's no elemental matchups, and no Eikon gives status effects (which are also absent in general, mostly. Technically your ice moves can freeze, but not the basic energy one) so what's the point?? Other element stuff outside of an Eikon's moves, like charging up Clive's sword, will always result in his default fire. So why go out of your way to turn my basic blasts "icy" when using Shiva's power if it doesn't change a thing? It's such an obvious choice to make combat more immersive while specifically putting more importance on the Eikon's powers.
The only parts of the combat I can say I actually found good were the chronolith trials. These limit you to one Eikon per trial, going through waves of enemies and doing different actions give you a time bonus. After 3 waves you fight a boss with the extra time you've accumulated. I liked this because it was the only time I ever actually had to think about how and when I used my abilities, or which basic combo to use.
I’m almost certain this game resents being a game rather than a TV show. You can feel the games unwillingness to give the player actual control of a character after a 30 minute cutscene, just to walk down an empty corridor so another cutscene or dialogue can play. When fighting those damage sponge bosses, many times the game gets bored waiting for its turn and tapping its feet, so wrestles the controller away from you to show you how much better they are at this than you. But don’t worry, when boss fights turn in to cutscenes the game will occasionally have a “Press square” or “Mash square” prompt so it can say “See you ARE still playing the game!”. Calling them quick time events would be a bit of an exaggeration because I'm pretty sure you get a good 5 seconds to hit the single button that pops up.
This reaches its peak during one of the battles near the end in which the ENTIRE fight is a cutscene where you get to press square every now and then. The fact they give this battle the usual health bars is almost insulting. It's like those YouTube videos "X vs Y with health bars". If you're gonna be a cutscene just be a damn cutscene, stop trying to pretend to be a game.
The Eikon battles where you turn into Ifrit are the epitome of style over substance. Gameplay is reduced to be even more basic than before with far less things you can actually do, yet they're some of the most impressive-looking action scenes I've seen in a game.
I'm kinda mixed on voice acting. Some of it is good, some of it is fine and some characters just have these dull, monotone voices that feel like the actor is reading the script out loud to themselves for the first time. Not helped by the fact many characters in cutscenes will stand there emotionless, even ones that don't have equally dispassionate voices (this isn't the case for every scene mind you, there's some great ones).
The world is fairly uninteresting to explore. Towns are pretty barebones. They have shops and some side quests, but generally nothing to do that makes any one town unique outside of their roles in the story (which to be fair, does give them a lot of personality by itself). The open world is much larger than it really needs to be. There's these huge open areas but no real reason to explore most of them. You might find tiny amounts of gill or crafting material, but there's very rarely anything of substance hiding in there. Mostly it just seems like they're huge for the sake of letting the devs put side quests and monster hunts into more places than would otherwise feel realistic if everything was as small as it needed to be for the main story.
Dungeons are the opposite. It's literally just corridor, followed by mob fight, followed by corridor, mob fight etc. Sometimes a mini boss. Then you end with the big boss. After the mob fight it can be hard to remember which way to even go because both backwards and forwards look the exact same.
Maybe you'll find an accessory in a dungeon or in the open world though. It won't be exciting unfortunately. Almost every accessory in this game does one of two things: Boosts the power of a single move (not an Eikon, but a specific move for that Eikon) or reduce the cooldown of a specific move...by literal seconds. The funniest one to me is an accessory that reduces the charge time of your basic magic blast to its stronger version by 0.2 seconds. This isn't even a random find in a chest, this is specifically a reward for completing a certain amount of side quests that you only get relatively late in the game. 0.2 seconds!! Like I know it doesn't take that long to charge in the first place, but why in the hell would I want one of my 3 slots taken up by something that reduces the time of a charge by less than 1/4th of a SECOND.
There are a handful of more interesting accessories, like the one that gives you a mini limit break on a perfect dodge. But they're very rare.
Weapons and armour likewise lack anything outside of pure stats. Every one is just power, defence and health. The most basic and bland way to do weapon progression imaginable.
I also want to bitch about the sprinting. In order to sprint you don't press a button, you have to run for a little bit first and then Clive will sprint after a few seconds. This is annoying enough by itself, but it ONLY works in the open world sections. When in towns or dungeons you can only move at the slow pace. This gets beyond annoying when you have to constantly shuffle back and forth in any given place as part of a side quest (you will learn to hate the second hideout with the amount of times you have to 'run' around it).
Speaking of side quests, once again - good in the story sense,; bad in the gameplay sense. Every side quest falls into one of three categories: "There's a monster that needs beating - go beat it", "There's a thing I need - go get it (there's a monster there when you arrive at the destination)", "There's a thing I need to speak to - go get it (you get it without any conflict whatsoever)". Like the fact there's literal sidequests in the game that involve you just going from one character to another to go through dialogue with zero gameplay is astounding. They're less side quests and more side stories.
OK I think I'm done complaining about this. Fantastic as a story experience, horrible as a game despite the good baseline they made with smooth feeling combat that they unfortunately over simplified. There's a reason I started this game in July and only finished it now. I've never had a game that I both wanted to see through to the end, yet dreaded playing so much.
So what's the problem? Well everything I've been praising isn't really a good game. It's more of a great show. The actual gameplay stuff in the game is average at best and horrible at its worst.
Firstly the combat, which is the least offensive part. It's very fluid, fast paced and satisfying. It does fall short in the sense that it's a lot more shallow than it might initially seem. Combined with the fact enemies are massive damage sponges, you just kind of repeat the same 2 or 3 combos over and over and over and over. Never having to think or focus on the fight because you do it so much it's just second nature to input the few different button commands. The only reason you even switch things up is for that little bit of variety, because there's no difference between strategies or techniques, nothing you can do to better defeat one enemy from another, it's just mindlessly mashing away at those same button sequences. When a move comes off cool down you use that to get a bit of extra damage, but the majority of special moves do just that, a bit of damage and you wait for it to cool down again. There's a couple of moves that have a little more thought put in to them, like ones that are made to counter, or ones that require you to hold the button for a little longer and release at the right time for a bit of extra power, which is still so minimal of an interaction it's barely worth mentioning. Almost none of the moves seem to synergise with each other, I can think of maybe one (the Ramuh one that spawns a ball) that directly benefits from specific other moves (in this cases ones that do multiple hits at once, like Bahamut's ultimate move). All others are just a case of "Use this one, then the next one, then the next one".
Weirdly despite summons being a key plot point here, elemental weaknesses and resistances are absent. It's like they purposefully dumbed things down to the point where no choices you make in combat or build matter at all. What's weird about this is that the game makes a point to say Eikons you equip will change your basic energy attack. But why? They all do the same power, there's no elemental matchups, and no Eikon gives status effects (which are also absent in general, mostly. Technically your ice moves can freeze, but not the basic energy one) so what's the point?? Other element stuff outside of an Eikon's moves, like charging up Clive's sword, will always result in his default fire. So why go out of your way to turn my basic blasts "icy" when using Shiva's power if it doesn't change a thing? It's such an obvious choice to make combat more immersive while specifically putting more importance on the Eikon's powers.
The only parts of the combat I can say I actually found good were the chronolith trials. These limit you to one Eikon per trial, going through waves of enemies and doing different actions give you a time bonus. After 3 waves you fight a boss with the extra time you've accumulated. I liked this because it was the only time I ever actually had to think about how and when I used my abilities, or which basic combo to use.
I’m almost certain this game resents being a game rather than a TV show. You can feel the games unwillingness to give the player actual control of a character after a 30 minute cutscene, just to walk down an empty corridor so another cutscene or dialogue can play. When fighting those damage sponge bosses, many times the game gets bored waiting for its turn and tapping its feet, so wrestles the controller away from you to show you how much better they are at this than you. But don’t worry, when boss fights turn in to cutscenes the game will occasionally have a “Press square” or “Mash square” prompt so it can say “See you ARE still playing the game!”. Calling them quick time events would be a bit of an exaggeration because I'm pretty sure you get a good 5 seconds to hit the single button that pops up.
This reaches its peak during one of the battles near the end in which the ENTIRE fight is a cutscene where you get to press square every now and then. The fact they give this battle the usual health bars is almost insulting. It's like those YouTube videos "X vs Y with health bars". If you're gonna be a cutscene just be a damn cutscene, stop trying to pretend to be a game.
The Eikon battles where you turn into Ifrit are the epitome of style over substance. Gameplay is reduced to be even more basic than before with far less things you can actually do, yet they're some of the most impressive-looking action scenes I've seen in a game.
I'm kinda mixed on voice acting. Some of it is good, some of it is fine and some characters just have these dull, monotone voices that feel like the actor is reading the script out loud to themselves for the first time. Not helped by the fact many characters in cutscenes will stand there emotionless, even ones that don't have equally dispassionate voices (this isn't the case for every scene mind you, there's some great ones).
The world is fairly uninteresting to explore. Towns are pretty barebones. They have shops and some side quests, but generally nothing to do that makes any one town unique outside of their roles in the story (which to be fair, does give them a lot of personality by itself). The open world is much larger than it really needs to be. There's these huge open areas but no real reason to explore most of them. You might find tiny amounts of gill or crafting material, but there's very rarely anything of substance hiding in there. Mostly it just seems like they're huge for the sake of letting the devs put side quests and monster hunts into more places than would otherwise feel realistic if everything was as small as it needed to be for the main story.
Dungeons are the opposite. It's literally just corridor, followed by mob fight, followed by corridor, mob fight etc. Sometimes a mini boss. Then you end with the big boss. After the mob fight it can be hard to remember which way to even go because both backwards and forwards look the exact same.
Maybe you'll find an accessory in a dungeon or in the open world though. It won't be exciting unfortunately. Almost every accessory in this game does one of two things: Boosts the power of a single move (not an Eikon, but a specific move for that Eikon) or reduce the cooldown of a specific move...by literal seconds. The funniest one to me is an accessory that reduces the charge time of your basic magic blast to its stronger version by 0.2 seconds. This isn't even a random find in a chest, this is specifically a reward for completing a certain amount of side quests that you only get relatively late in the game. 0.2 seconds!! Like I know it doesn't take that long to charge in the first place, but why in the hell would I want one of my 3 slots taken up by something that reduces the time of a charge by less than 1/4th of a SECOND.
There are a handful of more interesting accessories, like the one that gives you a mini limit break on a perfect dodge. But they're very rare.
Weapons and armour likewise lack anything outside of pure stats. Every one is just power, defence and health. The most basic and bland way to do weapon progression imaginable.
I also want to bitch about the sprinting. In order to sprint you don't press a button, you have to run for a little bit first and then Clive will sprint after a few seconds. This is annoying enough by itself, but it ONLY works in the open world sections. When in towns or dungeons you can only move at the slow pace. This gets beyond annoying when you have to constantly shuffle back and forth in any given place as part of a side quest (you will learn to hate the second hideout with the amount of times you have to 'run' around it).
Speaking of side quests, once again - good in the story sense,; bad in the gameplay sense. Every side quest falls into one of three categories: "There's a monster that needs beating - go beat it", "There's a thing I need - go get it (there's a monster there when you arrive at the destination)", "There's a thing I need to speak to - go get it (you get it without any conflict whatsoever)". Like the fact there's literal sidequests in the game that involve you just going from one character to another to go through dialogue with zero gameplay is astounding. They're less side quests and more side stories.
OK I think I'm done complaining about this. Fantastic as a story experience, horrible as a game despite the good baseline they made with smooth feeling combat that they unfortunately over simplified. There's a reason I started this game in July and only finished it now. I've never had a game that I both wanted to see through to the end, yet dreaded playing so much.