If it wasn't for how shoddy this game is on a technical level, especially for how it can perform on PC, and some small gripes I have with the presentation and gameplay at times, this could've easily been a close runner-up for my certified GOTY. The premise was pretty odd yet intriguing in its relationship to the original Final Fantasy. I think, especially after finishing it, it filled the exact type of relationship Crisis Core seemed to have with the original FFVII. Originally, I didn't even imagine it could even be close to GOTY material while playing through this for how enjoyably good but not impressively "great" it was. The story is decent stuff but the presentation left me hanging in the first half for how weird the pacing was and how too straightforward it seemed, chaos meming aside. Then the last stretch of the game right through the very ending changed my entire experience into something that really wowed me more than I initially expected.
Jack Garland has officially joined the cool kids club of memeworthy vidya game protagonists alongside the likes of J.C Denton and The Nameless One. It kinda sucks that the perception of the character is tainted like this because it distracts from how genuinely very good he is as a character. Being the rare well executed example of both a tragic hero and a tragic villain at the same time, while interestingly recontextualizing the original Final Fantasy. I would even go bat at the notion that he’s one of the best protagonists in the entire franchise for how endearing he grew to be. The other characters are pretty paper thin to be honest, really teetering towards FFXV territory sometimes, but their dynamic was still fun to witness including how they played into the plot later on.
The gameplay is very fun. The job system allows a refreshing amount of customization and freedom in whatever playstyles you want to adopt in combat. Part of the fun comes with unlocking and experimenting with different jobs to see which one really makes for the best gameplay loop. Some of them I thought were uninteresting to really work with, like pretty much any hand-to-hand melee job, but others like Dark Knight, Berserker, Dragoon, and Black Mage were really fun to play as. The only minor letdown is that I don’t think there’s enough scenarios in the game to really push how special the job system can be aside from the boss fights which are the highlights. Tiamut was the real vibe check of the game that made sure you were actually playing it instead of just unga bunga-ing your way to win fights. I also really like the missions being homages to various locations and environments from the mainline Final Fantasy games. With how they're even acknowledged through the lore of this game I have to imagine there's this extra layer of metacommentary going on with the story as well which is cool to think about. It’s a shame that the gear/loot system is pretty poor though. You get way too much from fighting enemies or clearing missions and it ends up just visually clogging up your inventory menus whenever you try to check and see which one you should equip for each character. Usually they don’t even offer that much better stats or bonus effects from the gear you usually wear in certain points so there’s not much of a reward to be gained here.
The best thing I took from this is that now I'm really eager to play Final Fantasy 1 and that I hope Jack Garland shows up in Kingdom Hearts as a secret superboss.
Jack Garland has officially joined the cool kids club of memeworthy vidya game protagonists alongside the likes of J.C Denton and The Nameless One. It kinda sucks that the perception of the character is tainted like this because it distracts from how genuinely very good he is as a character. Being the rare well executed example of both a tragic hero and a tragic villain at the same time, while interestingly recontextualizing the original Final Fantasy. I would even go bat at the notion that he’s one of the best protagonists in the entire franchise for how endearing he grew to be. The other characters are pretty paper thin to be honest, really teetering towards FFXV territory sometimes, but their dynamic was still fun to witness including how they played into the plot later on.
The gameplay is very fun. The job system allows a refreshing amount of customization and freedom in whatever playstyles you want to adopt in combat. Part of the fun comes with unlocking and experimenting with different jobs to see which one really makes for the best gameplay loop. Some of them I thought were uninteresting to really work with, like pretty much any hand-to-hand melee job, but others like Dark Knight, Berserker, Dragoon, and Black Mage were really fun to play as. The only minor letdown is that I don’t think there’s enough scenarios in the game to really push how special the job system can be aside from the boss fights which are the highlights. Tiamut was the real vibe check of the game that made sure you were actually playing it instead of just unga bunga-ing your way to win fights. I also really like the missions being homages to various locations and environments from the mainline Final Fantasy games. With how they're even acknowledged through the lore of this game I have to imagine there's this extra layer of metacommentary going on with the story as well which is cool to think about. It’s a shame that the gear/loot system is pretty poor though. You get way too much from fighting enemies or clearing missions and it ends up just visually clogging up your inventory menus whenever you try to check and see which one you should equip for each character. Usually they don’t even offer that much better stats or bonus effects from the gear you usually wear in certain points so there’s not much of a reward to be gained here.
The best thing I took from this is that now I'm really eager to play Final Fantasy 1 and that I hope Jack Garland shows up in Kingdom Hearts as a secret superboss.