Pokémon Omega Ruby is the game I spent the most hours in. Not only is this a great remake of my favorite region, it also expands on it a lot. And yes, I know, the Battle Frontier is missing. I missed it, as well. But that’s about the only major thing I dislike about OR/AS.

I invested over a thousand hours into completing the entire Pokédex, breeding perfect Pokémon for competitive battles and tournaments, I hunted and bred shiny Pokémon, also for competitive battles or just for casual possession. And yes, I participated in hundreds of competitive battles and dozens of tournaments. I wasn’t the best trainer, but I was good. I loved it so, so, so much. This game literally changed my life. I made so many friends IRL and online due to this game. I also spent hours into trading, especially Wonder Trade in hope to get one of these totally legit shiny competitive monsters from Sakati and others.

As I said, Hoenn is my favorite region and it contains most of my absolute favorite monsters, such as Linoone, Sableye, Blaziken, Manectric, Gardevoir, Salamence, Metagross and its legendaries Groudon, Kyogre and Rayquaza, especially its shiny version.

I know this region isn’t the most varied one, there’s a lot people wouldn’t love the most, too much water and whatnot, but this game is just very special to me and I think it’s a genuinely great game. It’s also the last Pokémon main title I enjoyed on very high levels. I hold this game dear and I stand by it.

Boy oh boy, my expectations for this game were exorbitantly high and yet, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth exceeded almost all of them.

It took me a few years to appreciate what Remake is and what it was doing and I still do have a few major problems with it. Some of them lie within the nature of Midgar itself. Rebirth on the other hand is a near perfect game.

I only have a few minor issues with it, such as the resolution in performance mode or the framerate in graphics mode. The game struggled to load some textures during in-game cutscenes, such things. But I’m not petty, that doesn’t drag down the game that much. I’m not a fan of a few mini games, as well. I think this game does have amazing mini games, most of them are very well integrated into the story and the quality is top notch, but I wish the piano mini game had some accessibility options. It’s literally impossible for my brain to focus on two sticks for the piano. It just says no, even if it’s the easiest song with the slowest rhythm. So I wish there was a way for people like me to clear the songs some other way. The other mini game that infuriated me was the chocobo gliding. Not that it’s hard or impossible for me to clear, but I don’t know why they thought it’d be a great idea to not be able to move the camera in order to spot the rings? I heard they fixed it in the latest patch already, but I didn’t try it and I already had to suffer anyway.

I also didn’t enjoy the Cait Sith part in Shinra’s Villa, but that’s about it.

There’s nothing else I could complain about. As I mentioned, a nearly perfect game.

This game took everything that was great in Remake and refined it on so, so, so many levels. Be it the materia system, the easy to learn but hard to master combat system, the mechanics, the exploration in the open world or during linear sections or the RPG elements. You need to know, I’m a bit conservative when it comes to the definition of “RPG” or “JRPG”, so I rarely (not never) consider action RPGs “JRPGs”, sometimes not even truly “RPG”, but the RPG elements in Rebirth are so well thought-out and deep that I’m calling this one a full-fledged JRPG. I consider the Tales series JRPG, as well, just as another example, but I do not consider NieR: Automata a JRPG, even though it’s one of my absolute favorite games of all time. And I do not consider Final Fantasy XVI a JRPG or RPG in any way.

Rebirth really puts XVI into perspective, huh? Better story, dynamic party members that interact with you and with each other, each character is beautifully written, meaningful or silly side quests, Cloud can actually run fast, there’s much more to explore, the soundtrack is a lot better, you can catch chocobos, high quality mini games, great mechanics, actual RPG elements, accessories and equipments do more than giving you 0.1 second less of a cooldown for just one skill. Final Fantasy XVII really needs to be more like Rebirth, because Rebirth is unironically as good as the golden era Final Fantasy games that are VI to X. It’s full of heart and soul. It’s a love letter not only to Final Fantasy VII, but to the best era this series ever had. Final Fantasy VII is my favorite game of all time and Rebirth made me love it even more, while knowing the original (and Crisis Core) makes me love Rebirth even more, as well.

As to the story, I don’t want to leave spoilers in here, but I loved every second of it. Even the “ending” that is controversial to some of players.

And I got Tifa as my date. You KNOW why this scene is GREAT.