Lunawuna
A pretty big departure for the series till this point. Whereas FC & SC were slow treks around the largely idyllic countryside of liberl; here you slowly go through the levels of a dungeon crawl in a secretive dimension past the prologue.
Kevin Graham had some level of mystique in SC before his major role in the finale, and here we finally get an expansion on his character as he gets to take center stage. The tidbits of his past are slowly revealed in beginning of chapter slideshows that range from 5-10 minutes which I enjoyed, the previous two games were told in a more conventional manner and I do miss them but this style that keeps on until the final chapters holds to the pacing this game ascribes to in addition to it's own version of side content which I will touch on later. I think even with this being his only game in this trilogy and the probable rest of the series, he has the upper hand on Estelle at least in regard to how interesting I found them individually, not just their closest counterparts in their respective relationships.
In SC & FC the majority of the side content was in the form of tasks you could find on guild boards but instead here it is all seperated into short stories and mini-games - doors. Skipping doors isn't something I would recommend but especially the several that aren't minigames and that aren't just flavor pieces for characters. Multiple go in depth on events, people, and items that were probably some of the bigger questions of the trilogy and the game. A few doors in particular seem to heavily allude to and shed light on future events and the series going forward, particularly the latter doors which also just so happen to have tenser prerequisites. The very last door is incredibly dark and together with Kevin's story made this game somewhat hard to get through at times. I've seen a lot of complains that some doors drag on too long but I feel most of them aren't deserved, a lot of these refer to moon door 3. You go through the motions in this door more than any other and I do feel it went on for a bit too long but it served it's purpose well enough.
Phantasma wasn't the most fun crawl imaginable but it's backstory and reason for existence is interesting and makes me have some appreciation for it, even if I didn't quite enjoy going through it as much as I did journeying a state like in the previous games. the side content does well to break up the pace and I think that the pacing takes somewhat of a turn for the worse if you don't stop occasionally to take a peek at them, if not all.
I did not enjoy 3rd as much as others fans like I did FC & SC, and had to push myself a bit harder with this game at it's most boring points more than the last two but like the last two it has some great highs. Getting one last hurrah with the sky trilogy cast was a joy and the goodbyes at the end were very sweet. This was great fan service and sendoff for sky.
Kevin Graham had some level of mystique in SC before his major role in the finale, and here we finally get an expansion on his character as he gets to take center stage. The tidbits of his past are slowly revealed in beginning of chapter slideshows that range from 5-10 minutes which I enjoyed, the previous two games were told in a more conventional manner and I do miss them but this style that keeps on until the final chapters holds to the pacing this game ascribes to in addition to it's own version of side content which I will touch on later. I think even with this being his only game in this trilogy and the probable rest of the series, he has the upper hand on Estelle at least in regard to how interesting I found them individually, not just their closest counterparts in their respective relationships.
In SC & FC the majority of the side content was in the form of tasks you could find on guild boards but instead here it is all seperated into short stories and mini-games - doors. Skipping doors isn't something I would recommend but especially the several that aren't minigames and that aren't just flavor pieces for characters. Multiple go in depth on events, people, and items that were probably some of the bigger questions of the trilogy and the game. A few doors in particular seem to heavily allude to and shed light on future events and the series going forward, particularly the latter doors which also just so happen to have tenser prerequisites. The very last door is incredibly dark and together with Kevin's story made this game somewhat hard to get through at times. I've seen a lot of complains that some doors drag on too long but I feel most of them aren't deserved, a lot of these refer to moon door 3. You go through the motions in this door more than any other and I do feel it went on for a bit too long but it served it's purpose well enough.
Phantasma wasn't the most fun crawl imaginable but it's backstory and reason for existence is interesting and makes me have some appreciation for it, even if I didn't quite enjoy going through it as much as I did journeying a state like in the previous games. the side content does well to break up the pace and I think that the pacing takes somewhat of a turn for the worse if you don't stop occasionally to take a peek at them, if not all.
I did not enjoy 3rd as much as others fans like I did FC & SC, and had to push myself a bit harder with this game at it's most boring points more than the last two but like the last two it has some great highs. Getting one last hurrah with the sky trilogy cast was a joy and the goodbyes at the end were very sweet. This was great fan service and sendoff for sky.
A Truly Amazing Game!
The game's prologue was a great immediate continuation of the finale of fc and served as a nice break from everything we saw from trails thus far in terms of the mountain area and it's structure.
The first half is admittedly pretty slow but it has enough switch-ups in it's episodic returns and investigations of each region (especially 3 & 5), for me to keep interested. A latter chapter also has some element of repetitiveness and it's something that I do wish could have been injected with more variety but the boss fights are fun and it serves it's purpose.
The character work is still incredible and potentially even much better, FC's planted seeds begin sprouting and some characters growth or just in general presence is great.
The story was irresistible especially near the end and the way it tugs on your heartstrings was special.
Multi-tiered orbal slots are cool and so are multi-party member s crafts.
Excited for the rest of this series.
The game's prologue was a great immediate continuation of the finale of fc and served as a nice break from everything we saw from trails thus far in terms of the mountain area and it's structure.
The first half is admittedly pretty slow but it has enough switch-ups in it's episodic returns and investigations of each region (especially 3 & 5), for me to keep interested. A latter chapter also has some element of repetitiveness and it's something that I do wish could have been injected with more variety but the boss fights are fun and it serves it's purpose.
The character work is still incredible and potentially even much better, FC's planted seeds begin sprouting and some characters growth or just in general presence is great.
The story was irresistible especially near the end and the way it tugs on your heartstrings was special.
Multi-tiered orbal slots are cool and so are multi-party member s crafts.
Excited for the rest of this series.
Yeah it's a pretty good intro to a series with over a dozen games.
The ending will make you want SC immediately without question
The ending will make you want SC immediately without question
2007
It's a powerful and well-made game.
2007
It's a powerful and well-made game.
1994
Magnifico, Un juego con demasiado discurso etereo. Te puedo dicir, es ganado.
I adore this game's setting. the setting and aesthetic is touted as steampunk and largely is; much as you'll come to see in the opening hours and especially as you move through the main story, is moreso something like magi-punk. The heavy industrialization of the world does three things for me
1. looks very freaking cool !
2. Does a good job at selling in conjunction with the opening crawl-the lurking corruption and evil that's risen alongside the world itself
3. (the less giddy version of my first notation) The tech and landscapes make for some truly great designs and vista's. This doesn't just apply to static things like the buildings and such. One of my favorite moments in the game is approaching a wide and large-scale city.
The combat is not why I play final fantasy but it's something I greatly enjoy often, and it is no different here. Every character has their own unique ability or skills but everyone can be anything, Yes just like FF7 with Materia and FF5 (differing ranges of freedom and efficacy as well as systems obviously to note) You can give several people roles that the game initially does not have them fill or that you'd intend them to, and that customizability is great here again. To utilize the full range of combat, you need to make full use of keeping people in the desired rows, having the correct items and relics (accessories that give certain buffs or effects), as well as in general smartly use magic. It's all mostly stuff I've seen before and it's not exactly the most complex system of combat ever, but it feels perfect honestly and the progression and variety especially if you make use of your cast of 14 party member's, is great and keeps it fun enough to get just through that 30-45 hour runtime.
Characters are mostly strong writing-wise. Some standouts, Some duds though non-offensive. The majority of the cast has some level of charm and I think just about everyone has a favorite or set of favs. The way they play off of each other is very fun (one scene sectioned into a montage in particular does this amazingly well) and the idea of all these people being apart of a rebellious world saving group with a common goal or.. just temporarily teaming up seems believable. All the characters experience some form of loss or undergo hardship and learn something about themselves and seeing them prevail and unite after witnessing some of their lowest points is sweet. Doing side content (more prominent in the second half) gives some additional characterization to the party which I also greatly enjoyed for the most part. A flaw many people bring when discussing this game and when comparing it to other final fantasy games is the frequent splitting and significant character-party juxtaposition.A side-effect is you may miss out on specific events and dialogue may be generalized at points because of the differing parties people may have. It's a fair point but It doesn't matter too much to me. The freedom to use whoever I want however I want almost whenever I want is too great a pull for me. Having the correct member for whichever unique moment also rewards the player for picking them to travel, it's more unique for me and also could add to replay value.
Final Fantasy 6's story may not stand out today but to my knowledge, a story in the same vein with similar twists had't been done in the gaming sphere (at least not popularly). Even if this weren't to hold true. The unexpectedness of the game's main subversion when it comes and how it comes still holds well enough today, To me it was a little bit predictable but who knows how much of that was just the discourse surrounding it and the theories I was concocting en route to see just what was going to transpire.
Uematsu's score for this game may just be the strongest of all the final fantasy I have played until this point: 5, 7, 9, 10, 16, and now 6 . The wild-westy zing of terra's theme or the music for the first town and how foreboding it is or looking at the unique pieces for the different towns, it's all very good.
I've said much good about the game but little bad and that's mainly because there wasn't much I displeased. The combat is fun, The world is fun to explore. The game was well-paced, poor dungeons were little, the story was soulful and well-meaning, the characters save for a few were well-written and fit their roles within the narrative well and the music makes me merry.Talking about the antagonists would go into spoiler territory but they were pretty good too.
> The ending is good
> I finished in roughly 35 hours doing most of the content
> I love this game and would put it second to final fantasy 10 in my ff's list. 10 I would say has more blemishes but the two main characters of that story and their relationship as well as the thematics of that story hit me much more and as much as I love the world in VI, X's Spira is gorgeous and dream-like in a way I've rarely seen. One of my favorite settings ever.
I adore this game's setting. the setting and aesthetic is touted as steampunk and largely is; much as you'll come to see in the opening hours and especially as you move through the main story, is moreso something like magi-punk. The heavy industrialization of the world does three things for me
1. looks very freaking cool !
2. Does a good job at selling in conjunction with the opening crawl-the lurking corruption and evil that's risen alongside the world itself
3. (the less giddy version of my first notation) The tech and landscapes make for some truly great designs and vista's. This doesn't just apply to static things like the buildings and such. One of my favorite moments in the game is approaching a wide and large-scale city.
The combat is not why I play final fantasy but it's something I greatly enjoy often, and it is no different here. Every character has their own unique ability or skills but everyone can be anything, Yes just like FF7 with Materia and FF5 (differing ranges of freedom and efficacy as well as systems obviously to note) You can give several people roles that the game initially does not have them fill or that you'd intend them to, and that customizability is great here again. To utilize the full range of combat, you need to make full use of keeping people in the desired rows, having the correct items and relics (accessories that give certain buffs or effects), as well as in general smartly use magic. It's all mostly stuff I've seen before and it's not exactly the most complex system of combat ever, but it feels perfect honestly and the progression and variety especially if you make use of your cast of 14 party member's, is great and keeps it fun enough to get just through that 30-45 hour runtime.
Characters are mostly strong writing-wise. Some standouts, Some duds though non-offensive. The majority of the cast has some level of charm and I think just about everyone has a favorite or set of favs. The way they play off of each other is very fun (one scene sectioned into a montage in particular does this amazingly well) and the idea of all these people being apart of a rebellious world saving group with a common goal or.. just temporarily teaming up seems believable. All the characters experience some form of loss or undergo hardship and learn something about themselves and seeing them prevail and unite after witnessing some of their lowest points is sweet. Doing side content (more prominent in the second half) gives some additional characterization to the party which I also greatly enjoyed for the most part. A flaw many people bring when discussing this game and when comparing it to other final fantasy games is the frequent splitting and significant character-party juxtaposition.A side-effect is you may miss out on specific events and dialogue may be generalized at points because of the differing parties people may have. It's a fair point but It doesn't matter too much to me. The freedom to use whoever I want however I want almost whenever I want is too great a pull for me. Having the correct member for whichever unique moment also rewards the player for picking them to travel, it's more unique for me and also could add to replay value.
Final Fantasy 6's story may not stand out today but to my knowledge, a story in the same vein with similar twists had't been done in the gaming sphere (at least not popularly). Even if this weren't to hold true. The unexpectedness of the game's main subversion when it comes and how it comes still holds well enough today, To me it was a little bit predictable but who knows how much of that was just the discourse surrounding it and the theories I was concocting en route to see just what was going to transpire.
Uematsu's score for this game may just be the strongest of all the final fantasy I have played until this point: 5, 7, 9, 10, 16, and now 6 . The wild-westy zing of terra's theme or the music for the first town and how foreboding it is or looking at the unique pieces for the different towns, it's all very good.
I've said much good about the game but little bad and that's mainly because there wasn't much I displeased. The combat is fun, The world is fun to explore. The game was well-paced, poor dungeons were little, the story was soulful and well-meaning, the characters save for a few were well-written and fit their roles within the narrative well and the music makes me merry.Talking about the antagonists would go into spoiler territory but they were pretty good too.
> The ending is good
> I finished in roughly 35 hours doing most of the content
> I love this game and would put it second to final fantasy 10 in my ff's list. 10 I would say has more blemishes but the two main characters of that story and their relationship as well as the thematics of that story hit me much more and as much as I love the world in VI, X's Spira is gorgeous and dream-like in a way I've rarely seen. One of my favorite settings ever.
This review contains spoilers
I really loved the information control, social engineering, existentialism, and virtual reality aspects of the plot in this game. The big reveal at the end with the patriots and ocelot’s betrayal to solidus and subsequent takeover from liquid, it was all great and that last codec conversation was so haunting and largely applicable to swaths of society today. Jack and Rose’s relationship was full of dysfunction and had rampant holes in the foundation that made the revelations near the end even more impactful and it gave enormous context to the mystery & intrigue Jack was shrouded in most of the time… On the topic of jack his character arc was absolutely superb, lots of people hate it but getting thrown into this random little dude’s shoes on this random oil cleanup facility knowing just as little as him but not quite being able to relate to him because of that aforementioned mystery, great. Solid Snake’s role initially as Pliskin is super well done, you don’t know the extent to which he’s willing to work alongside you but equally you understand he’s probably not apart of the “villainous” groups present here. I don’t find much else truly worth talking about with him but his final speech was something that gave me feelings a game never provided me before.
The final two to three hours of this game are a mind-boggling experience of tremendous proportions, all the knowledge you thought you gained in the last 8-10 hours is immediately thrown far far out the window or given entirely new context. Exchanges you thought had no meaning, Plot Holes, etc… Chekhov’s gun use here is pervasive and you could argue it’s overused a bit but none of these twists and turns come out of nowhere luckily.
The gameplay was good simply put. A good variety of weapons but not too much for this semi short experience, the big shell felt a little restrictive and a ton of people seem to find the whole thing boring but I like and think most every room and piece is well made. stealth was.. well stealth; it’s purpose was served well although I’ll say it felt very good for a 2001 game. And not just feel, it LOOKED good too, beautiful game truly. One thing I do regret now is not having played the first metal gear solid because of the Shadow Moses rerun the game was building up to and a multitude of characters that I just didn’t truly get until the end or at all. It would have been great to see the improvements between this and the last game. Being someone who frequently thinks about the meaning of life and the value of humanity and the purpose and responsibility we have on this planet, this game tore me for a loop and made my head spin. The more I ponder this title the more I love, it’s truly something masterful.
That tanker mission and the sense of security you were lulled into being the “big bad super soldier solid snake” and then moving on after things go awry there to the perspective of this secret agent who is tasked with finding the president that turns more and more into an insane mission with so many questions and mysterious figures until the president provides you with a ton of answers but not to any that you particularly asked. Then you have to rescue the daughter of the quirky scientist guy and she ends up killed and they all meet up in this security room from hours before, and then things get more and more and just more and more chaotic and philosophically layered. I’m gonna think about this game for a long while, I find it hard to talk about it that well since I feel I miss some of the essence presented but I did my best showing what I thought overall. I don’t usually care about stealth games but passing this up was not an option to me and I’m so glad I didn’t.
2001
A really memorable game, everything about it is pretty superb.
The fog, atmosphere, plain voice acting/character expression, use of symbolism & allegories, short length, increasingly esoteric puzzles, the main villainous entity, sound design, and monster design ^.
The ending is fantastic too and the game spends a solid amount of time both guiding you to and misleading you in the buildup to it.
I like some of the level's "twisting on themselves" and making you go even deeper into already fraught spaces, being as vague as possible here.
I only really dislike how confusing it can be to know where to go but that's probably much better on subsequent playthrough's + it may just come with the territory
The fog, atmosphere, plain voice acting/character expression, use of symbolism & allegories, short length, increasingly esoteric puzzles, the main villainous entity, sound design, and monster design ^.
The ending is fantastic too and the game spends a solid amount of time both guiding you to and misleading you in the buildup to it.
I like some of the level's "twisting on themselves" and making you go even deeper into already fraught spaces, being as vague as possible here.
I only really dislike how confusing it can be to know where to go but that's probably much better on subsequent playthrough's + it may just come with the territory
Some sections mainly missions 18 and 19 were a bit tedious and felt lazy especially after the mean streak they had going on ever since the early levels but otherwise besides a couple bad bosses and confusing puzzles I don’t have much bad to say.
Combat is fun and expressive.
Story starts out really silly (not that that’s bad) but gains weight as it goes on.
Cast is fantastic, especially the jester
Most bosses felt challenging but not overly so and fun to fight.
Temen-ni-gru; the setting for this game isn’t quite as alluring at first glance to me as something like the castle on mallet island from two games prior. That being said the looping around and different vistas and general familiarity with it as the game went on made me appreciate it.
It’s good.. also dante riding a rocket is one of my favorite scenes ever now.
2010
One may think themselves knowledgeable on every crack and crevice but will never know how to play caravan
2015
Haza!
This was a game I was pretty excited to try out again after only dabbling in it a little while years ago when it was previously free with PS Plus. it was a mostly good experience but feel like there some rough patches in the game, particularly towards the halfway point and beyond with a lack of expanded on content and ideas. Sometimes the game tries a little bit too hard to be punishing and difficult, that's typical of from soft games but to me doubly true here.
I feel like this would have been a bit of a stronger game if they gave a little more care and love to the atmospheric portions of the game instead of making oh ooaa hard game. Blood vials and quicksilver bullets (the healing and ammunition in bloodborne) are a little annoying to farm for though they can create a nice feeling if you gravitate towards the same early spot as I did and wreck and appreciate the layout of the areas even more.
Speaking of the areas, Central Yharnam, my preferred farming spot for consumables most of the playthrough. Is possibly one of the best opening sections of any game I've ever played and my absolute favorite in the "soulsbornekiroring" series. The length, difficulty, shortcuts, secrets, and general vibe are immaculate. The roaring of a beast in the distance as you make your way up a long winding ladder, followed by a raving crowd of town denizens patrolling the streets en route to a wolf-beast burned at the stake, It's great stuff. Some more exploration, and a couple finely crafted encounters later, you come across your first boss, a hunter or a beast. I thought was a nice decision to make as it provides you with the two most numerous types of boss's encounters, you'll face throughout the game, the fact both are very memorable/neither is particularly worse is great but a bit misleading to me since a lot of encounters especially on the beast side take a bit of a turn for the worse here by not being quite as good in terms of mechanics and fairness. Some poor execution afterwards but so much of the game enemies included looks beautiful I'm willing to almost ignore it, but I can't.
Ideas not being expanded on was something I didn't expand upon myself funnily enough, yeah. There is something called insight in this game which functions a bit similarly to humanity from dark souls' series in terms of gameplay, multiplayer especially. you summon players with insight and can gain insight by being summoned to help clear an area boss among other methods. The thing is though, insight has vast lore implications, and it has few uses beyond purchasing some weapon buffs and summoning, and the developers not giving more attention and variety to its uses is a bit saddening.
This game has a lot of really annoying enemies and that's all I'm going to say, alonne knights, basilisks, the latria jailers I can't remember the name of. Any single potentially annoying souls enemy you can name and even enemies from other games like novistadors or poison headcrabs or mirelurks, bloodborne has an equally annoying or even more annoying answer for them.
There are three potential final bosses and I think all of them hold great value but the one that you can fight if you make a certain decision (minus the accumulation of celestial items) is one of the best in the series, A beautiful arena, great music, a killer motif that caps off the game and fits the series well, it's all there.
Some areas could have been expanded (and a little easier to find ngl), there could have been more weapons, the bosses could have met the quality of their higher peers so I could brag about this game with the same confidence I did before actually playing it, the eldritch insane asylum shit could have become even more relevant earlier somehow (idk), all that said
This game FUCKS
All the scary wary berserker monster that either dies too easily or takes too many trips to central yharnam or the selling off of all your ritual bloods for consumables because your lazy is worth it. Because you get to experience a great atmospherically rich game with a solid lineup of high-class enemy's that have their name on the bottom of the screen and a big health bar and a story and accompanying lore that makes Elden Wing and Dark Souls 3 look lame as hell and childish with how non-unnerving and non-confusing it is in comparison. Can't wait to play Old Hunters DLC
This was a game I was pretty excited to try out again after only dabbling in it a little while years ago when it was previously free with PS Plus. it was a mostly good experience but feel like there some rough patches in the game, particularly towards the halfway point and beyond with a lack of expanded on content and ideas. Sometimes the game tries a little bit too hard to be punishing and difficult, that's typical of from soft games but to me doubly true here.
I feel like this would have been a bit of a stronger game if they gave a little more care and love to the atmospheric portions of the game instead of making oh ooaa hard game. Blood vials and quicksilver bullets (the healing and ammunition in bloodborne) are a little annoying to farm for though they can create a nice feeling if you gravitate towards the same early spot as I did and wreck and appreciate the layout of the areas even more.
Speaking of the areas, Central Yharnam, my preferred farming spot for consumables most of the playthrough. Is possibly one of the best opening sections of any game I've ever played and my absolute favorite in the "soulsbornekiroring" series. The length, difficulty, shortcuts, secrets, and general vibe are immaculate. The roaring of a beast in the distance as you make your way up a long winding ladder, followed by a raving crowd of town denizens patrolling the streets en route to a wolf-beast burned at the stake, It's great stuff. Some more exploration, and a couple finely crafted encounters later, you come across your first boss, a hunter or a beast. I thought was a nice decision to make as it provides you with the two most numerous types of boss's encounters, you'll face throughout the game, the fact both are very memorable/neither is particularly worse is great but a bit misleading to me since a lot of encounters especially on the beast side take a bit of a turn for the worse here by not being quite as good in terms of mechanics and fairness. Some poor execution afterwards but so much of the game enemies included looks beautiful I'm willing to almost ignore it, but I can't.
Ideas not being expanded on was something I didn't expand upon myself funnily enough, yeah. There is something called insight in this game which functions a bit similarly to humanity from dark souls' series in terms of gameplay, multiplayer especially. you summon players with insight and can gain insight by being summoned to help clear an area boss among other methods. The thing is though, insight has vast lore implications, and it has few uses beyond purchasing some weapon buffs and summoning, and the developers not giving more attention and variety to its uses is a bit saddening.
This game has a lot of really annoying enemies and that's all I'm going to say, alonne knights, basilisks, the latria jailers I can't remember the name of. Any single potentially annoying souls enemy you can name and even enemies from other games like novistadors or poison headcrabs or mirelurks, bloodborne has an equally annoying or even more annoying answer for them.
There are three potential final bosses and I think all of them hold great value but the one that you can fight if you make a certain decision (minus the accumulation of celestial items) is one of the best in the series, A beautiful arena, great music, a killer motif that caps off the game and fits the series well, it's all there.
Some areas could have been expanded (and a little easier to find ngl), there could have been more weapons, the bosses could have met the quality of their higher peers so I could brag about this game with the same confidence I did before actually playing it, the eldritch insane asylum shit could have become even more relevant earlier somehow (idk), all that said
This game FUCKS
All the scary wary berserker monster that either dies too easily or takes too many trips to central yharnam or the selling off of all your ritual bloods for consumables because your lazy is worth it. Because you get to experience a great atmospherically rich game with a solid lineup of high-class enemy's that have their name on the bottom of the screen and a big health bar and a story and accompanying lore that makes Elden Wing and Dark Souls 3 look lame as hell and childish with how non-unnerving and non-confusing it is in comparison. Can't wait to play Old Hunters DLC