Survival horror is a genre I have never viewed as my favorite despite my consistently great experiences with these games. From the thrilling scares to great soundtracks and simple gameplay progression, survival horror has evolved over the years but retains much of what makes the genre so special. Crow Country is the most recent spiritual successor to this genre, being a stellar callback to the horror games of the 90s both in look and play and also making creative choices that make it stand out more.

The game's plot has you playing as agent Mara Forest as she is sent to the titular Crow Country amusement park to locate its owner Edward Crow. From here you set about exploring the amusement park to progress all while fighting a series of increasingly grotesque monsters. The game takes a lot of its inspiration from Resident Evil with the loop of solving puzzles and collecting key items being a staple of this genre. Outside of the usual items one would collect, such as ammo and health, there is also a load of secrets one can uncover that give both upgrades and new weapons.

One of the best aspects of survival horror is exploring every facet of a space whether it be a mansion or a space station. Slowly learning the layout of the amusement park and how it intertwines with the different parts of it is an immensely satisfying feeling. Each bit of progression in the game also causes the status of the rooms to change to be more dangerous so you are always left on your toes especially if you want to comb areas. The basic controls for the game are fine allowing you to line up your shots so as not to waste ammo. I played this game on a keyboard and I would recommend following the game's recommendation and playing with a controller as that will surely lead to a more satisfying experience. I got used to the controls after some time but I never fully felt as in control as I would have been if I used a controller.

The game is a pretty simple entry into the survival horror genre it being pretty easy in both the combat and puzzles. I would say the base difficulty was a little too easy with there being only a few moments where I felt stressed for ammo and health pickups. This also leads to the game not being super scary for me but it still succeeds in setting an unnerving tone throughout. The game is getting a Hard Mode in the future which will hopefully add to increasing the tension. For the most part, the puzzles are fun to solve and not too difficult either. There were a few cases where the solution to a puzzle is found on a note that is located somewhere else resulting in some backtracking and also requiring you to see the note in the first place. One puzzle I had to look up simply because I could not find the note that would give me the answer. This highlights a problem I have where the notes are collected in handbooks found in save rooms. I do not know why these notes could not be simply viewed from your inventory screen as it saves you from having to go back several rooms to read a note.

One aspect of the game that stands out the most for me is its very unique art style. Every part of the game looks like it is part of a plastic toy set with many of the character models looking like a Playmobil figure. This look creates a lighter tone for the game overall and is one of my favorite-looking games I have played all year. Despite its soft look, the art style is used effectively in creature designs making it hard to comprehend exactly what you are looking at at times.

Crow Country is a stellar survival horror game and one I could easily recommend as an entry point into this genre. As soon after I beat it the first time, I quickly did a second run to achieve the highest rank possible. My second run showcased how optimized the game's progression making it ripe for speedrunning. I also loved seeing all of the foreshadowing the story presents early on basically spelling out many of the late-game moments early on. This has been my favorite game to come out this year so far and one I could not recommend enough for fans of the genre.

The fifth best Final Fantasy XIV expansion, a modern Final Fantasy IV: Final Fantasy XVI is a game that I understand why people like it, but I cannot really conceive of how somebody would love this game. And don't let me stop you from loving it if you truly do, there's certainly moments of beauty within FFXVI that feel meant for somebody with much different sensibilities than I, it just remains a pretty thoroughly underwhelming affair to me personally -- both in what the game promises and in what it fails to deliver.

Mechanically adequate, systemically superfluous, and structurally mundane, but where Final Fantasy XVI really fucks up is with its thoughtlessly derivative narrative and dull characters. The way CBU3 have plucked concepts, backstories, and characterizations from popular shows like Game of Thrones isn't necessarily the worst thing they could do on the face of it, it's just how little those aspects end up mattering outside of being familiar tropes that the player can quickly identify. The same could be said for the game's attempt at a more serious tone with a focus on geopolitical affairs. The game starts off with two sequences that are almost identical to ASOIAF/GoT's Winterfell introduction, which is then followed by a Red Wedding-esque event to make sure you understand how fucked up this world really is. Except, that's kinda where everything stops being like that, they copied GRRM's homework, now it's time to be Final Fantasy!

Which like, if they wanted to copy Game of Thrones, you'd think they'd be a little more confident about it. Like, the way Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy IV, and Final Fantasy VI cop shit from Star Wars (and I guess a bit of Dune and LotR) feels like expert craftsmanship in comparison, because they also fairly accurately replicate the tone of space operas (just, you know, in the form of pseudo-sci-fi medieval fantasy). They sort of try to keep up with the underlying geopolitics aspect throughout the game, but it mostly falls apart by the end and Valisthea never really ends up feeling like a real place to me. So post-GoT-esque intro, the first third of the game's tone plays out like a more linear, bootleg Witcher 3, in a kind of unflattering way.

The remaining two-thirds of the game do feel pretty distinctly Final Fantasy (with a pretty weak undercurrent of half-baked Matsuno-isms) with structure identical to a Final Fantasy XIV expansion. The latter aspect was comforting at first since I kinda enjoy the simplicity of a fresh FF14 expansion, but it's easily the worst part about the moment-to-moment experience of Final Fantasy XVI, making the game much more prolonged -- and much of it being coated with the tasteless grey sludge of live service content creation habits -- than it really needed to be during its most important narrative escalations. The former aspect is what keeps the experience feeling adequate, but it really just doesn't do enough to differentiate itself from most of the series in terms of character dynamics, overarching themes, and fantasy elements. Really feel like most people who aren't allergic to turn-based combat are better off playing Final Fantasy IX or VI for most of the stuff XVI is trying to pull off. There's even this point where the characters decide to embark on this Final Fantasy V/Final Fantasy VII-esque quest to save the environment, and that also just kind of goes nowhere as the game buckles under concept bloat and is wordlessly replaced with a different thing later on.

The funniest part is the last third of the game is so clearly bogged down in its own bullshit that they had to add this NPC that feels like she was ripped out of Dragon Age Inquisition or something to explain the plot to the player because there isn't actually enough deliverable gameplay moments or constructive skits to bookend all the threads the game has set up by this point. I guess it's more disappointing than funny in the end, there were moments in FFXVI that made me wanna feel that it's all somehow worth it, but so much of it is just unearned or passively malicious in what it's conveying to the player.

The thing that almost makes the whole experience worth it -- a pretty common opinion -- is def the eikon fights, though I can understand if they're too spread apart and too mechanically fluffy for somebody who wants more substantial action gameplay to sink their teeth into. They're carried by their presentation and spectacle, as the gameplay interaction ends up feeling pretty junk food-y, but fuck they rule. Even the one towards the end that everybody I hates, I love that one too! Though maybe it's because I'm permanently a sucker for CBU3's boss encounter design, even if it's gotten a little stale in Final Fantasy XIV itself lately.

The combat design might be another story unfortunately, like, it's not bad, I actually kind like it because I have the issue with my brain where I enjoy performing class rotations in MMOs, but slapping that kinda shit onto DMC5-lite was not the move I think. There's just not enough going on here to be having a cooldown-based system integrated with kinda barebones action gameplay, and I don't think the individual eikon abilities themselves are interesting or cohesive enough to make up for the lack of both strategy and truly engaging action. Glad to see the stagger system here, but I kind of almost would've preferred if CBU3 had copied even more from the FF13/FF7R dev team's combat ideas.

The game is clearly designed around the fact that you can only play as Clive, and it only adds to that dynamism that's sorely lacking from most of the characters; if you're not going to show me enough of who these characters are in the cutscenes themselves, you could at least communicate it through gameplay, like other games in the series do. Clive's solipsistic streak feels pretty fucking forced compared to protags like Zidane or Cloud, Clive is just way too fucking reasonable of a dude most of the time I don't really buy it! And that's fine, I like having nice protagonists sometimes, but they spend the entire game trying to convince he's this brooding lone wolf! It doesn't help that in the game's pursuit of copying and pasting elements from other FFs, it also steals their mistakes: like Clive's main motivating factor being resolved like 5 hours into the game just like Cecil in FF4 and forgetting to make any of the women actually characters, also like Final Fantasy IV.

Like, I wanna say on average Jill is better written than FF4 Rosa, but at least you get to play as Rosa! Sure, both Jill and Rosa are treated as fragile baby birds who are forced to stay at home while the men go fight, but at least Rosa gets to defy that notion when it counts. It's just kinda pathetic what's happened here, like, CBU3 doesn't have an amazing track record with women characters, but at least they do get to do things and have individual motivations for participating in the story in Final Fantasy XIV. Even compared to the FF14 expansion that preceded the start of FF16's development, Heavensward, it feels notably regressive.

It'd be bad enough if it stopped there, but the two other women in the main cast are probably treated even worse. The first one's whole characterization is how she manipulates men with sex to gain power, with the writers using threat of SA as a motivating factor for her transformation into an eikon. Actually fucking vile! They even just straight up copy a panel from Berserk! And the other one's main character trait is she's an evil mom (basically just Cersei Lannister without any of the actual interesting parts). There's one secondary woman character towards the back half of the narrative who's probs the only woman with a personality, which is a shame! Jill especially had a lot of potential as at least Clive's best friend and confidant, and it's just wasted on a character who sits there and placidly stares while bloodlessly agreeing with everything Clive says and does. They can't even make her interesting as an extension of Clive, let alone as a person with actual interiority.

I don't really hate Final Fantasy XVI as much as this review would make you believe: I love adventures and I love action RPGs, and it does a pretty decent job of both. It's "comfy", but it could've been so much more with the kind of talent that Square and CBU3 have on hand, but consistently have failed to utilize to their fullest, outside of maybe Shadowbringers. Like the soundtrack is the best microcosm of all of this; Soken has an insane pedigree, and while his work here is mostly high quality, it feels like his strengths are being misutilized to adhere to a specific vision that maybe should've gotten a few more complete redraftings. Final Fantasy XVI half-heartedly commits to aesthetic ideals and tropes that were already outdated years before it released, in a way that feels almost Final Fantasy, but is ultimately never really elevated into its own cohesive identity.

Anyways, play Asura's Wrath instead. It's got the same misogyny per capita, but it's basically like if you cut out all the rest of the bad parts of Final Fantasy XVI and then also made it way cooler at the same time. 'Star Wars x Fist of the North Star x Buddhism and Hinduism' clears 'Spark Notes of A Song of Ice and Fire books 1 thru 3 x Buzzfeed Article History of Final Fantasy Series' any day.