A rock-solid action game wrapped in the skin of a bloated fantasy RPG, I couldn't help but feel there was lots of unrealized potential here on pretty much every level, from narrative, thematic, and character writing to all gameplay outside of combat, quest design, you name it; and yet I would still recommend it easily, in all of its flawed splendor, to anyone with the slightest bit of curiosity for it.

The reason this game doesn't get docked an extra half-star for this review is because for every horribly-paced fetch quest you trudge through, full of stiffly-animated NPCs and relentless backtracking, the heights this game reaches with its Eikon battles, full of bombastic music and cinematic flair, are so astronomically ascendant that it will successfully distract you from how bored or frustrated you were an hour ago as your inner-teen resurfaces and loses its mind at the insanity blasting from your screen and speakers. The spectacle ranges between the kind of cinematic scale that God of War games used to be so famous for before its reinvention for the modern era and the shounen-excess of your favorite anime battles. It's really hard to find anything else like it in the current gaming space, and I appreciate that there are developers like Creative Business Unit 3 that will make you understand "yeah, that looks like it would take half a decade and a couple hundred million $ to make" once you finally get to experience the fruits of their labor.

All in all, I enjoyed my time with this game and for how tired the side content can get I still got out of it what will likely be some of the most memorable gaming moments of this year, and will likely endure when I look back at the end of this decade to examine what stuck with me all the way through.