I would probably never have played this if the sequel hadn’t received so many positive reviews. I admit, I got curious, but first I wanted to give this shorter prequel a try, to get a feel for the series, especially the combat system, as I’m not very good at this active/metroidvania style of gameplay.

Well, now that I’m done, I have mixed feelings, but mostly negative ones, I’m afraid. The graphics and soundtrack are nice, in my opinion. I really like this “2.5D” approach with 3D environments and the 2D, pixel-art characters, I think it looks gorgeous, and the music is OK, too (don’t expect any voiced texts, though). Also, the story is… hm, fine, I guess? There wasn’t really anything memorable in it, no huge twists, but it served its purpose, more or less. The characters, however, including the protagonists, are quite bland, if you ask me (except for Garoo – I mean, come on, he’s a cool, one-eyed kangaroo mercenary with a giant sword as his weapon, you simply can’t get more badass than that!).

Focusing only on the main questline, it’s surprisingly short for a JRPG. That said, if you’re a completionist like me, and want to get the max level weapons and armours, well, then get ready for an insane amount of side-quests. I’m not kidding, you can finish the game in about 10-15 hours, and you’ll have to spend half, or probably even more of this time doing extremely boring, repetitive side-quests. “Go there and talk to this person”, “go there and get x amount of this”, stuff like that. And I swear, the quest-givers kept asking for the same two or three resources all the time! Always that stupid hardwood lumber and high-purity ore, God… I must admit, after a few hours I just simply skipped all the dialogues involving side-quests, I lost all my patience for them.

I don’t think I’ll start Hundred Heroes anytime soon, even if it’s much better. I’ve had enough of this world for a while.

Well, this was definitely more fun for me than Echoes of the Fallen, mainly because it was more story-oriented. We get new characters, a number of new locations, new collectibles, new side-quests, and a bunch of new moves for Clive. There’s also the epic Leviathan boss battle, which is just as spectacular and action-packed as the other Eikon battles in the main game. Ah, and there’s even some additional bonus content, like a new roguelike multi-stage battle mode – which was not for me at all, but I’m sure many of you will love it.

I’d say this DLC is a nice farewell to the game as a whole, and it’s worth checking it out as there’s a lot of content here (nowhere near as much as in, for instance, Burning Shores or Phantom Liberty, though, mind you). I still don’t like the whole action-focused direction, I must admit, so I guess I’ll stick to more “oldschool-like” FF titles for the time being.