KetchupPoptart
Finished with around 52.68% completion, ??? hours (emulator crashes lost them)
Hello according to Backloggd dot com I have not finished a game in over a year? So here we are again
I started this game like a week early and was pretty hooked, but eventually burnt myself out on it and took a huge break before completing it now.
The new abilities are undoubtedly much more fun than the original game's. Not much to say in praises since you can find that pretty much everywhere.
The half-sequel-half-dlc feel to this game felt really weird to me and was kind of in the back of my head the entire time. It really does follow a very similar progression and you go to the same areas and meet the same people and whatever. But if you played this game on its own that repetitiveness wouldn't be a problem. But if you played this game on your own you wouldn't have any context for anything. But also so much of the original game was just like retconned or erased for some reason. No real point to be made here...
Having a buddy or two was really cool but the full squad? Pretty clunky and annoying, as many have said.
I already get so overwhelmed with open worlds on their own, that it almost felt like with the amount of freedom this game gives in comparison to the previous one I ended up just going straight from point A to point B a lot of the time. I also spent the majority of my time in the depths which was kind of a big mistake because it's pretty undercooked after a certain point. I never actually used the final ability that you get since it uses resources and I have a gamer brain when I play video games.
Also no vai outfit?
Hello according to Backloggd dot com I have not finished a game in over a year? So here we are again
I started this game like a week early and was pretty hooked, but eventually burnt myself out on it and took a huge break before completing it now.
The new abilities are undoubtedly much more fun than the original game's. Not much to say in praises since you can find that pretty much everywhere.
The half-sequel-half-dlc feel to this game felt really weird to me and was kind of in the back of my head the entire time. It really does follow a very similar progression and you go to the same areas and meet the same people and whatever. But if you played this game on its own that repetitiveness wouldn't be a problem. But if you played this game on your own you wouldn't have any context for anything. But also so much of the original game was just like retconned or erased for some reason. No real point to be made here...
Having a buddy or two was really cool but the full squad? Pretty clunky and annoying, as many have said.
I already get so overwhelmed with open worlds on their own, that it almost felt like with the amount of freedom this game gives in comparison to the previous one I ended up just going straight from point A to point B a lot of the time. I also spent the majority of my time in the depths which was kind of a big mistake because it's pretty undercooked after a certain point. I never actually used the final ability that you get since it uses resources and I have a gamer brain when I play video games.
Also no vai outfit?
Super nostalgic but is borderline not a video game
1994
Possibly unmatched in influence and charm, although experiencing it in 2022 was a bit painful. I don't think I could have gotten through this without a speed-up button (played on emulator), mainly due to the slow pacing and repeated dialogue when trying to perform simple actions like saving. Regardless of its growing pains, there are many untouchable moments here if you can match the game's wavelength.
7-8 idk
7-8 idk
Neat Fnaf type game that knows when to stay simple and when to be overwhelming. I might like the previous one more, but this one definitely shows the polish and unique ideas that can be used on this kind of game.
2021
Took me about 36 minutes on first run. Kind of obtuse and not very good at teaching you how to use the gimmick, but it's not awful. I was stuck on one part for a while and eventually did it once my mind wandered and I was thinking about something else. Also 420th game played lol
2022
Finally beat the game (82 hours, No spirits, No spells, No powerstancing, No debuffs). I have endless scattered thoughts without cohesion. I'm curious how my opinion will shape and change over the years, but this game is a reminder that I have grown up and there's more to life than obsessing over a video game series that I have for the past 8 years. I'll probably still write an essay on this though lol but we'll see.
Rating is a shot in the dark. This might be the most conflicted I've ever felt about a video game, exacerbated by the fact it's by far the most I've looked forward to one in my life. Between this and Evangelion, it seems as though in the 2020's nothing gold can stay.
Rating is a shot in the dark. This might be the most conflicted I've ever felt about a video game, exacerbated by the fact it's by far the most I've looked forward to one in my life. Between this and Evangelion, it seems as though in the 2020's nothing gold can stay.
This is literally the MBDTF of JRPGs. Grand in scale, very polished, showcasing new ideas and variations on the art form, but never deviating too much from the norm. Now that I have your attention...
SPECS / STATS:
I played this on a special performance build of Ryujinx and clocked in at around 62 hours on completion. Running at 1440p60fps along with a mod to remove the aliasing and motion blur, the game was graphically pretty great fidelity-wise apart from some textures flickering or hair lagging behind characters due to the modding. The credits rolled at twice the speed they should have, leaving the screen black as the music kept going, and I got softlocked one time when I had a vision in the first 10 hours, but other than that I don't remember any technical issues.
I started this playthrough a bit over a month ago in an attempt to finish before Elden Ring's release, but that didn't work out. I ended up playing way too much each day, up to 10 hours, and literally got to the final boss the morning of Elden Ring's release, practically forcing me to put it off for a week or two.
AS A REMASTER:
The new QoL changes are pretty awesome, sacrificing the Crazy Taxi style guide arrow for a functional path on the minimap that updates in realtime. I don't remember the original's menus too well, but in terms of menuing (which you can get sucked into for long periods of time) everything was pretty fluid here.
I mentioned before that the graphical fidelity here is great, but honestly in terms of art style it's still a toss-up between this and the original for me. This artstyle grew on me throughout the playthrough but something about the original is so nostalgic and warm, yet dark and gritty that fits the tone of some of the sections of this game a lot better imo. I will admit Melia looks like a muppet, though.
My BIGGEST ISSUE with this game was the controls on an Xbox Series X controller. I don't know what I was doing wrong, but scrolling through the arts with the D-Pad really, really started to mess with my thumb about 20-30 hours in, to the point where it felt numb. I ended up rebinding the controls and swapping ZR and ZL with the left and right arrow and found it much more comfortable. This also allows you to move around while selecting arts, just like on the original Wii Remote controls.
THE GAME ITSELF (Or, My Nitpicks):
There has been enough talk about this game already that I don't really know what I could add to the conversation besides silly analogies like the top paragraph. It was interesting to play this after Solatorobo, an action RPG on the DS, since they have a pretty similar structure (and it sounds like Xenoblade 2 does as well): an adventure story on a land above a sea of clouds, with an emphasis on a myriad of side quests, character dialogue, the cultures and unique environments of each village along the journey, and Evangelion inspirations that show themselves more as the story progresses. I suppose that can apply to many RPG's, though.
While I loved many things about the game, like exploring the world, meeting new characters, and watching them interact with each other, I thought that it was maybe a little bit overly long, and set unrealistic goals for itself. I was super engaged in the story until I hit the final 10 hours or so, where I couldn't help but lose some interest due to how much expository dialogue there was in the final sixth of this game. The music is super solid, until you realize about 5 hours into the game that you've heard half the soundtrack already. With a 1 hour soundtrack for a 60 hour game, it can feel like being forced to listen to a short playlist of your favorite songs over and over again until you can't stand them anymore, like how the characters making jokes in combat feels like genius writing until you have to hear the same conversation for the 80th time, or how the boss dialogue will be intimidating until they say it like 50 times in a row (that has to be a glitch, right?).
The combat itself is great and an engaging spin on classic JRPG combat, though I'm not educated enough to know how influential it has been on the genre (Does FFVII remake play like this?). It's pretty fun, and a chunk of my hours were probably spent experimenting and optimizing strategies with my team and their movesets, but I do wish there was a bit more to hold you over until the end of the game. I think I stopped unlocking arts around 15 hours from the end of the game.
CONCLUSION:
As negative as the points I bring up here are, this game at its core is phenomenal for the time it was made, and it is a miracle that all of the systems at play here work so well together and aren't too overwhelming. Once you upgrade your movement speed a bit, it's a blast to explore the super creative world and it's easy to get absorbed in the characters and their own unique stories. This game deserves the praise it gets, but it is not without faults, especially in the year it was remastered. However, depending on who you are, it can be extremely easy to look past these faults and find a new favorite JRPG.
In other words, it has issues, but, uh, uh, I love it, though... I love it, though... huh, you know?
SPECS / STATS:
I played this on a special performance build of Ryujinx and clocked in at around 62 hours on completion. Running at 1440p60fps along with a mod to remove the aliasing and motion blur, the game was graphically pretty great fidelity-wise apart from some textures flickering or hair lagging behind characters due to the modding. The credits rolled at twice the speed they should have, leaving the screen black as the music kept going, and I got softlocked one time when I had a vision in the first 10 hours, but other than that I don't remember any technical issues.
I started this playthrough a bit over a month ago in an attempt to finish before Elden Ring's release, but that didn't work out. I ended up playing way too much each day, up to 10 hours, and literally got to the final boss the morning of Elden Ring's release, practically forcing me to put it off for a week or two.
AS A REMASTER:
The new QoL changes are pretty awesome, sacrificing the Crazy Taxi style guide arrow for a functional path on the minimap that updates in realtime. I don't remember the original's menus too well, but in terms of menuing (which you can get sucked into for long periods of time) everything was pretty fluid here.
I mentioned before that the graphical fidelity here is great, but honestly in terms of art style it's still a toss-up between this and the original for me. This artstyle grew on me throughout the playthrough but something about the original is so nostalgic and warm, yet dark and gritty that fits the tone of some of the sections of this game a lot better imo. I will admit Melia looks like a muppet, though.
My BIGGEST ISSUE with this game was the controls on an Xbox Series X controller. I don't know what I was doing wrong, but scrolling through the arts with the D-Pad really, really started to mess with my thumb about 20-30 hours in, to the point where it felt numb. I ended up rebinding the controls and swapping ZR and ZL with the left and right arrow and found it much more comfortable. This also allows you to move around while selecting arts, just like on the original Wii Remote controls.
THE GAME ITSELF (Or, My Nitpicks):
There has been enough talk about this game already that I don't really know what I could add to the conversation besides silly analogies like the top paragraph. It was interesting to play this after Solatorobo, an action RPG on the DS, since they have a pretty similar structure (and it sounds like Xenoblade 2 does as well): an adventure story on a land above a sea of clouds, with an emphasis on a myriad of side quests, character dialogue, the cultures and unique environments of each village along the journey, and Evangelion inspirations that show themselves more as the story progresses. I suppose that can apply to many RPG's, though.
While I loved many things about the game, like exploring the world, meeting new characters, and watching them interact with each other, I thought that it was maybe a little bit overly long, and set unrealistic goals for itself. I was super engaged in the story until I hit the final 10 hours or so, where I couldn't help but lose some interest due to how much expository dialogue there was in the final sixth of this game. The music is super solid, until you realize about 5 hours into the game that you've heard half the soundtrack already. With a 1 hour soundtrack for a 60 hour game, it can feel like being forced to listen to a short playlist of your favorite songs over and over again until you can't stand them anymore, like how the characters making jokes in combat feels like genius writing until you have to hear the same conversation for the 80th time, or how the boss dialogue will be intimidating until they say it like 50 times in a row (that has to be a glitch, right?).
The combat itself is great and an engaging spin on classic JRPG combat, though I'm not educated enough to know how influential it has been on the genre (Does FFVII remake play like this?). It's pretty fun, and a chunk of my hours were probably spent experimenting and optimizing strategies with my team and their movesets, but I do wish there was a bit more to hold you over until the end of the game. I think I stopped unlocking arts around 15 hours from the end of the game.
CONCLUSION:
As negative as the points I bring up here are, this game at its core is phenomenal for the time it was made, and it is a miracle that all of the systems at play here work so well together and aren't too overwhelming. Once you upgrade your movement speed a bit, it's a blast to explore the super creative world and it's easy to get absorbed in the characters and their own unique stories. This game deserves the praise it gets, but it is not without faults, especially in the year it was remastered. However, depending on who you are, it can be extremely easy to look past these faults and find a new favorite JRPG.
In other words, it has issues, but, uh, uh, I love it, though... I love it, though... huh, you know?
2008
Daisy Mach Bike is literally heroin and no other racing game will ever feel as good to play
Full of flaws in retrospect but growing up on this was amazing. Some of the best aged visuals in any game and Link feels great to move around.
is this a real game?
2018
Beat in basically one sitting... 91 / 783 / 4:10:54.928
Pretty amazing. Basically perfect? A cornerstone in both gameplay and quality of life. There's no fat on this thing, every level is good. The story is pretty nice and just a little emotional. Madeline is an icon...
The difficulty curve here is pretty perfect, with just a few unlockables being a tad annoying, but they were always optional. Plus, I could usually tell what I was doing wrong and adapt.
Along with setting a golden standard in quality of life (quick respawns, no lives), I was pretty amazed at how this game visually teaches mechanics. With absolutely no waiting or reading, each idea that the game threw at me could be picked up, and understood basically instantly, and then built upon fluidly. The less you notice this kind of thing, the better it usually is... it wasn't until about the middle of the game when I instinctively reacted to an alteration on a concept that was taught to me earlier in the level, when I realized how masterfully these ideas were communicated. Great stuff.
---EDIT---
After spilling another 20 or something hours into the game and completing every single level, my opinion has either stayed the same or gone higher. While the extra content is extremely challenging, the elation of completing each part makes it worth it. I could genuinely tell I was improving, as when I came back to the base levels I was zipping through them and dying much less often. The bonus little rewards you get for completing everything are fun as well.
It wasn't until I installed CelesteNet that I genuinely starting questioning if this was a 10/10... I'm not sure if I should write about it here or make a separate review, but being able to climb alongside friends or meet other people on the same journey is amazing.
Pretty amazing. Basically perfect? A cornerstone in both gameplay and quality of life. There's no fat on this thing, every level is good. The story is pretty nice and just a little emotional. Madeline is an icon...
The difficulty curve here is pretty perfect, with just a few unlockables being a tad annoying, but they were always optional. Plus, I could usually tell what I was doing wrong and adapt.
Along with setting a golden standard in quality of life (quick respawns, no lives), I was pretty amazed at how this game visually teaches mechanics. With absolutely no waiting or reading, each idea that the game threw at me could be picked up, and understood basically instantly, and then built upon fluidly. The less you notice this kind of thing, the better it usually is... it wasn't until about the middle of the game when I instinctively reacted to an alteration on a concept that was taught to me earlier in the level, when I realized how masterfully these ideas were communicated. Great stuff.
---EDIT---
After spilling another 20 or something hours into the game and completing every single level, my opinion has either stayed the same or gone higher. While the extra content is extremely challenging, the elation of completing each part makes it worth it. I could genuinely tell I was improving, as when I came back to the base levels I was zipping through them and dying much less often. The bonus little rewards you get for completing everything are fun as well.
It wasn't until I installed CelesteNet that I genuinely starting questioning if this was a 10/10... I'm not sure if I should write about it here or make a separate review, but being able to climb alongside friends or meet other people on the same journey is amazing.
While it definitely has some issues and mechanics that lack synergy, oh my god this world sucked me in for so long.
2021
10/10 would summon 8 sheep every round to power up my dog again
2019
Some ok puzzles, but the core mechanic itself is kinda finnicky and a lot of rooms consist of walking around until you stumble across the solution. The ending was kind of neat tho? And the multiplayer seems fun with a lot of people.
2020
Finished what's available so far. Pretty cool, but some weapons still haven't really clicked for me (shotgun always feels like the damage is underwhelming, I still don't understand nailgun right click, etc). Some bosses were a little janky too. However, when everything clicks, the gunplay is fantastic, and the lack of any QoL problems make this an easy recommend.