I think the best way I could describe Final Fantasy XVI is that it’s one of the most “it’s so over -> we’re so back -> (repeat)” games ever

My favourite part of XVI was the combat, which didn’t feel like it got old even once for me. It was one of those types of gameplay that got better as you got further, especially with the amount of Eikons you get to unlock and chain together (Titan my beloved). I liked the story and Clive is easily one of my favourite protagonists in the franchise, I wasn’t too sure how I’d feel about him at first but he ended up growing on me a ton. And of course the boss fights were just perfect, with my favourites being Odin, Titan and Bahamut. There wasn’t a single one that didn’t have me at least slightly locked in, whether it was in Clive’s regular form or as Ifrit

With all that said though… I do kinda wish I ended up liking this game more? Don’t get me wrong I did really like it, but my god the lows of this game were enough to get in the way. I don’t think I need to say much about the pacing and amount of fetch quests this game throws at you out of nowhere since many people have said the same thing about them (for good reasons too). The part after the Titan battle especially because god that felt like it took foooorever to get through. I did enjoy the final parts but at that point, it did feel like it overstayed its welcome and I was more than ready for the game to be finished during the last few chapters

Despite all of that though, I enjoyed my time with XVI and felt that the ending was a satisfying one for me. I do wish I could call it one of my favourite Final Fantasy games, because it easily has so many parts that would make me think that if it wasn’t for the issues I had. If I spent a full £70 on this back when it first released, I would’ve been way more conflicted about it, so I’m more than glad that I waited. But with all that said, XVI was one that I liked and can definitely see why it was GOTY for many people

As I sat down and watched the credits roll after finishing a 12 hour reading session for Volume F, I might have relearned a lesson I learned many years ago. That I should never judge a book by its cover, or in Blue Archive's case, a book by its degeneracy. Blue Archive is truly a fantastic heart-warming story that is so earnest with how it portrays its themes via the multiple stories it provides.

Based on the stuff I've seen online, I expected this to be a pretty safe slice of life-ish gacha story, that would be good, but ultimately forgettable. The first two volumes exceeded that expectation, with the underlying message about an adult's role to guide young adolescents into growing and understanding what their goals are and how to achieve them elevating the pretty fun slice of life scenes and the serious moments when the plots get more involved with more stakes. Kivotos as a setting for Blue Archive expands the limits of what Blue Archive can do. It is both a very exaggerated and silly place that seems almost like a parody of slice of life series with how nonsensical many aspects of Kivotos work and are taken as the norm. But at the same time, these oddities are sometimes questioned and are used to expand the world, with raid monsters being these weird eldritch creatures, the main villain group Gematria having surprisingly cool and abstract character design, which makes the world mysterious in a way that makes you want to learn more about it while being vague enough that the writers can do pretty much anything for stories (kind of similar to Touhou now that I think about it).

The overall writing is very sharp and to the point, emphasizing lines that give situations more impact, both for levity and for serious moments, while having very little bloat (aka Arknights) present. There was a scene involving a bridge that takes place late in Volume 3 that conveyed a lot about two characters relationship with few lines of text, which really impressed me, especially coming from reading many Arknights events. Pivotal story moments near the ends of each Volume are voiced too, which greatly enhances the emotional impact of certain scenes.

Eden's Treaty surprised me though, with it ending up as one of the best stories I've read in a gacha (only behind FGO's Avalon le Fae as an absolute favorite). The entire conflict between Trinity and Gehenna and how the narrative explored the themes of communication via the irrational hatred both groups both hold for each other, the inherent flaw in trying to understand others, and the futility of living for a purpose, but to pursue a happy ending for everyone despite those logical fallacies was just so incredibly well executed and explored that it got me to really appreciate how uplifting and positive Blue Archive's story ultimately is, despite all the hardships and despair that can occur. Hifumi's "I love clichés" speech encapsulates everything about the optimistic themes of Blue Archive so well and made me tear up with how genuine and earnest it felt. Volume F continued the bar for high quality story-telling, delving more into choosing to live, despite all the bad circumstances in your life, and the role of an adult shouldering the mistakes a youth can make when they can rely on no one. The entire ending sequence of Volume F though was fantastic and captivated me from start to finish, making up for some bloated pacing during the battle scenes near the middle.

The characters are all very fun to see interact and do shenanigans with, which makes it very easy to be invested in them when the stakes raise and the students have to go through some real hardships. The group dynamics with each student in their specific club and school really allow some of these characters, despite not being the deepest, to just be really fun to watch act on screen (Make-Up Work Club my beloved). Not every character is the most complex or fleshed out, but the characters that are especially focused on (Mika, Saori, Terror Shiroko, etc.) are wonderfully explored and have lots of catharsis tied to their flawed ideologies, yet are guided to hope and grow through their Sensei.

Sensei, while being a self-insert, is a pretty damn good one, being a symbol of an adult just trying to lead their beloved students to a brighter future, despite the influence of corrupt deceitful adults that exist in the world (Gematria, Kaiser Corp, etc.). There is some degeneracy to the character, but the gigantic positive influence Sensei has on the students lives and struggles made me like Sensei as something much more than just a simple gacha self-insert protagonist. The students all get a lot of love too when pulled for, with each character having a unique Live2D lobby animation, and a support chain of events you can perform. These events range from very nice resolutions to story events, very silly but overall fun reads, to completely degenerate. There is LOTS to love about Blue Archive's cast and how the game treats them.

The music is fantastic, with it leaning very heavily into EDM style tracks. Story themes are very memorable and catchy listens, and the core battle themes and important songs in big moments being amazing (RE Aoharu, Alkaline Tears, Defective Pixel, Usagi Flop, too many more to count). It elevates a great story even more and makes the atmosphere very unique compared to other gacha stories.

If this was just a visual novel, I would probably come out loving Blue Archive, but unfortunately, this game is a gacha. To be fair, the game does use the fact that its a gacha for its story extremely well, with each Volume being very distinct from each other and exploring the multitude of students that exist in Kivotos rather than focusing on one centralized cast. But the gacha means that the actual gameplay is kind of bad... It's harmless auto battler stuff, with you selecting skills at the right times and timing skills for good positioning, but I just find that style of gameplay tedious and boring to deal with. The rates look great on paper (3% for a max rarity unit, 6% during certain limited banners), but the focus only being 0.7% means you'll have to spark most of the time (200 pulls) to get the desired unit you'd want. This is actually not the worst, as the average time to get enough currency to spark is 2 months, but the rates do look better than they actually are in terms of getting a focus.

Something that is greatly appreciated is how much this game respects your time, at least once the ball gets going with mission progress on your account. You can skip almost every daily task in the game with a simple sweep command, reaping all the rewards while skipping the tedium of the combat completely once you beat the node with a 3 star rating at least once. This significantly boosted my attention rate in this game, making it possible for me to focus entirely on the story without worrying too much about the gacha and being optimal, just sweeping dailies and completing missions effortlessly to idly progress. Story progression is rarely locked behind the gacha as well (with a few very notable exceptions), meaning that your story progress is moreso locked behind your account level rather than having the most optimal students and building a meta team. This again focuses the attention of the game less on meta and pulling for broken students, and more on just pulling for your favorites, to get their Live2D's, to see more of their characters in their Momotalk. The focus of Blue Archive is always on the students, no matter what.

Despite the actual game portion of Blue Archive being underwhelming to me, Blue Archive as a whole is a great time if taken as a visual novel, and is also so easy to maintain. Dailies take at most 3-5 minutes (unless raid events are happening), and all previous nodes can be swept at no additional stamina cost (unlike something like Limbus). One of my favorite gachas, and I'll definitely stick around for Arc 2.

I honestly have a lot less to say about Eternal Punishment as I did with Innocent Sin. I found the game to be enjoyable, but definitely did start to grow dull toward the middle to end sections, and it didn't pick up much in the conclusion for me.

I think much of this has to do with a lot of the story being retreading of Innocent Sin, with a lot of the structure being entirely beat for beat recreations of events in Innocent Sin. There was nothing offensive, but very few standout moments that had me feeling satisfied. I'd say that the major problem I had was the emotional throughline felt weak to me, as it was largely pushed toward Tatsuya who is not present through most of the game and story until the very end. While it didn't have anything as offensively bad or gross as the nazis, or the wasted potential of the Masked Circle in the first game... It also just felt lacking. Such as finding the fortune telling to be weaker than the wish granting and shadow men scenario in Innocent Sin. Again, just an alright and passable story that didn't grip me as much as I would have liked.

As far as the main cast: While I did enjoy Katsuya and Baofu and their bickering, I didn't really feel much for Ulala or Maya, who was weakened greatly with her voice being taken away. Maya still served as a better protagonist that Tatsuya in my opinion, but making her silent was a large mistake. As a result, with it largely being the four characters through most of the story, I felt their chemistry could have been stronger. With Maya silent, there was no fun banter with Ulala with her, and instead the best banter Ulala gets is with Baofu. Katsuya and Baofu have their moments with their morals ending up on opposite sides given one is a detective and one is a vigilante, but there also wasn't much with Baofu and Maya. Katsuya's crush on Maya was cute however. Tatsuya himself felt like he was written into being too gloomy, and while it makes sense in this scenario and with the themes of maturing and adulthood, it does take away other aspects of his character from the past game with him making goofy sounds to demons. I had gone with Nanjo route for story, and Nanjo largely was just the same as he was in P1, but I felt he had less chemistry with the EP cast than Yukino did with Maya in IS. As a result, it often feels like there are 3 1/2 party members for the full game, with Ulala, Katsuya, Baofu, and silent protagonist Maya. I would have liked the party to have a stronger connection, which probably would have helped with Maya no longer being silent, and Tatsuya opening up more in the end game.

The gameplay was largely the same, with a bit more difficulty put onto boss fights so they weren't as braindead as they were in Innocent Sin. I found the game to be a good blend of difficulty for the limited combat system, only finding some aspects to be more annoying and not well thought out. Such as the Old Maid skill being something that bosses could spam rather than having a cooldown or trigger to activate, and that some enemies had skills that could completely drain your wallet. In that sense, they just felt more mean-spirited than difficult. Beyond that, my thoughts from Innocent Sin's gameplay is largely the same. It was serviceable, was an improvement to problems in P1, still miss the grid system, but still doesn't reward exploiting weaknesses as much as SMT games, or future Persona games. Leading to using your favorite spell over and over again generally being the best strategy.

Overall, Eternal Punishment is mostly a lot more of Innocent Sin, but without the offensive parts of it. It has a decent story, a decent cast of characters, and decent gameplay for the time it came out in. Though, I think it does lack the strong emotional core and the highlights of Innocent Sin that I liked about it. In this sense, Eternal Punishment was fun, but nothing standout to me. Compared to Innocent Sin's constant highlights and low points, Eternal Punishment was just a steady ride from beginning to end. 3.5/5

Definitely a substantial improvement from the earlier games. Decent pacing for the most part and some strong moments. Kevin is a really good protagonist. Can't believe star door 15 was even allowed to be put in. That shit was crazy.

However, while still better than the earlier games, it still has things holding it back dramatically for me. My main issue with the game is that it's fairly underwhelming for most of it as everything that it does is done better in other games or stories I've experienced. 3rd is a standard execution of its ideas that brings nothing new to the table nor does it in a way that feels very impactful for me.

Another problem I have with it is that while the pacing is decent and for sure better than the earlier games, it's still not very good for me. Not much actually happens for most of the game as it mostly just repeats a similar formula, barely deviating until the very end, which by then the story is immediately about to end. The combat and dungeon crawling do not really circumvent this issue as they're fairly unimpressive for me overall, and by this point in the series, I'm burnt out and want to see a major shake up to the combat. I'm also fully burnt out on the setting and cast of Liberl, which further accentuates this problem for me. Hopefully the crossbell games deliver on these fronts.

For a series I have spent more than 150 hours at this point to be this underwhelming, it's such a shame and also a bit annoying. Especially when it is a hyped up entry such as this one.