One of those games I've thought about a lot over the years. I loved it from day one and back when it came out on PS3 I played it hours upon hours just adventuring around even though I never beat it.
The base game itself is a bit on the shorter end by today's standards (though tbh not a bad thing when I think about all the plethora of unending RPGs). The game is a bit unforgiving when it comes to story and questing. It does not tell you which quests are timed events and those entirely missable quests contain key story details you would at most have to pick up through context clues later.
And you know what? that's perfectly fine. The game is extremely replayable from it's campaign to it's class system. A proper NG+ encourages you to experiment and really master it's excellent combat system.
But the real star of the show here, the Dark Arisen expansion. Maybe one of my favorite dungeon crawlers ever offering just an absolutely brutal gauntlet that has you finally making use of all those excess items you've been gathering throughout the game. The amount of enemy variety here puts the base game to shame and the technical expertise of the combat needed here is pretty insane at times. Make no mistake, Dark Arisen is extremely difficult. But it is rewarding in some wonderful ways. This is the real meat of the game after the base game credits roll.
Capcom was firing on all cylinders with this game on the backhalf of a very wonky generation for them. They took all the right parts from their other successful games and mashed them together and for the most part nailed it.
Fair warning about the Switch port, it's got a pretty annoying combat music loop bug that happens pretty frequently. It can be fixed by entering a loading screen (loading doors, towns, major cutscenes, reloading, etc.), but I've found this game also works wonderfully with the music off at times because the soundscape is also very well done.
The base game itself is a bit on the shorter end by today's standards (though tbh not a bad thing when I think about all the plethora of unending RPGs). The game is a bit unforgiving when it comes to story and questing. It does not tell you which quests are timed events and those entirely missable quests contain key story details you would at most have to pick up through context clues later.
And you know what? that's perfectly fine. The game is extremely replayable from it's campaign to it's class system. A proper NG+ encourages you to experiment and really master it's excellent combat system.
But the real star of the show here, the Dark Arisen expansion. Maybe one of my favorite dungeon crawlers ever offering just an absolutely brutal gauntlet that has you finally making use of all those excess items you've been gathering throughout the game. The amount of enemy variety here puts the base game to shame and the technical expertise of the combat needed here is pretty insane at times. Make no mistake, Dark Arisen is extremely difficult. But it is rewarding in some wonderful ways. This is the real meat of the game after the base game credits roll.
Capcom was firing on all cylinders with this game on the backhalf of a very wonky generation for them. They took all the right parts from their other successful games and mashed them together and for the most part nailed it.
Fair warning about the Switch port, it's got a pretty annoying combat music loop bug that happens pretty frequently. It can be fixed by entering a loading screen (loading doors, towns, major cutscenes, reloading, etc.), but I've found this game also works wonderfully with the music off at times because the soundscape is also very well done.