As my second Resident Evil game (after RE Village and i didnt like it) I was a bit concerned whether i was able to get into this highly praised game or not, but after a few clips of leon saying corny lines and the game going on sale i jus said “Fuck it lets do it”

And that decision is something i did not regret, the game starts fast, diving you straight into action after the first cutscene and it gives off the feeling of uneasiness, the nerve that anything can pop up and catch you off guard and it does well when u reach the village section. Combining with constant action with addicting combat and the fast paced chapters with that uneasiness lingering, RE4 makes the first 5 chapters a thrill to binge thru and makes you enjoy every cutscene to take a breather.

Now the highlight of the game is the castle, after getting used to how the game works and loaded gear, capcom was ready to throw everything at you. Only a chapter into the castle they throw you one of the hardest stages in the game in water hall where you have are pressured to take on groups of enemies running at you while protecting ashley, it doesn’t make it better when you send ashley off to hold a wheel while they have a whole bunch of enemies running at her and you, stages like these make the games so engaging and at the same time nerve wracking

multiple stages in this castle were amazingly placed and executed and the whole map layout was jus a joy to explore, one thing i dislike about re4 are the tedious puzzles, it could be cuz im dumb as shit but those some of those puzzles seem damn near impossible to solve out without a yt video, the only one i figured out was the sword and knight one cuz it was straightforward. One thing i would like to add is Luis and how enteraining as a character he is, making chapter 11 one of the best in the game.

Lastly the Island, not as good as the castle(which tbf the castle took up majority of the game) but it still consists of worthy content to add, such as the krauser boss fight, which had an amazing concept within the trap section, 1 on 1 knife action, constant engagements and interactions that all just made him the most fun boss fight i played in this game.

To be honest theres not rlly a single flaw i had with this game (besides Ada voice actor) nah but seriously i think the only thing lacking would be a more engaging story, because alot of the story was jus look for ashley, protect ashley, rescue ashley, play as ashley, rescue ashley,protect ashley, rescue ashley, until the end of the game and it does become a bit repetitive and ik resident evil isnt know for its focus on story since its more loved for its action (rightfully so) but i came to overlook it since leon is the protagonist of the game

Resident Evil 4 Remake is like the perfect standard of what a 4 star game should be like and it was a great game to potentially hook me back in the Resident evil Franchise.

ok

take this rating with a grain of salt i havent played the first twewy and reddit told me this was standalone even tho the third week was obviously dependent on prior knowledge i only played this shit off the whim while scrolling thru the ps plus page

besides being overwhelmed with information from the previous game, i can speak on the content exclusively to this game

honestly i had no clue what to expect from neo twewy as it looked like a game atlus would’ve developed and not square enix so i was a little skeptical in how the gameplay would work. to my surprise square enix pulled off what a good jrpg should do and that was being able to introduce a interesting battle system and engaging combat all while being grindy which usually ends up with me being addicted to a game such as that.

The concept of each button acting as one of the party members was something i never expected to see in a game but still exceeded in neo. combining with a fast paced combat, multiple party members flying at a touch of a button, addicting loud abstract music,flashy moves and cool looking enemies neo twewy had some of the best gameplay a jrpg can offer

the puzzles in this game were rlly unique and actually pretty fun to do which is rare in games and more specifically in the jrpg genre. at first i hated the remind shit since at first i was a dumbass and circled my analogs fast which brings frustration but once u get used to the mechanics its pretty fun and easy to do. i wish the implant puzzles appeared as much as remind since those puzzles were also nice
dive was pretty straightforward it could be annoying tho in week 3 when everything is a fucking tank. the investigation shit in week 2 was annoying asf tho. rewind could be get dragged on alot and could be repetitive especially at the final day of week 3 where u literally read the same dialogue like 4 times but other than that it was neatly done

the scramble days were honestly not as bad as reddit made it out to be and it made the cast feel more alive at the same time. i honestly missed it in week 3 when majority of the teams were gone.
neo twewy has a fun cast with engaging interactions that compliments the comic like layout and playing this game on japanese (like you should for 95% of jrpgs) added alot to the characters personality.

as much as i would like to praise the gameplay alone the reason this game has 2 stars missing are in its writing. Neo twewy hands us many characters that suffer from some type of flaw such as rindo and his indecisiveness/lack of individuality, how easy it is for him to lose himself on his phone for advice and even taking quotes from a online influencer to be able to gain self confidence and obviously his time travel ability to foil those characteristics and force him to trust in himself.
or fret and the classy go happy character but is unable to actually communicate his true feelings and say whats truly on his mind

all these concepts on paper make this game seem so well written and it had potential to be but the problem was its execution in doing so. neo tends to have this subtle writing throughout the arcs of these major characters but it becomes TOO indirect

example; Fret conflict as stated before is his inability to communicate and the character that challenges his flaw starts to point that so we see how it CAN affect another character but we cant see how fret reacts until suddenly that character is in danger and all of a sudden fret is a changed man, whats missing is the meat of the development show how fret’s inability to express his feelings truly challenges his situation in the the game
or the character he cares for. this goes the same with rindo but hes handled better towards the end of the game even tho he could’ve been better if the game expanded on his conflict to depend too much on the internet

the game is very inconsistent with keeping the character arcs subtle or jus straight up slap it in our face like shokos development was jus straightforward as fuck, rindo as much as i said was subtle also had moments where the game was like “hey don’t forget his conflict” and they have like fret say “nice job rindo you are capable of making a decision by urself” or smth

also the swallow mystery was done horribly, and it was painfully obvious who that person was and the fact it got revealed near the end of the game and basically out of nowhere left a bad taste

the pacing of week 2 was awful, i mean before day 6 literally nothing happened and none of we did actually mattered in the later week cuz neku arrived!

dont get me wrong the story wasnt outright awful it had its good moments and rindo conflict was still decently executed (its hard to fuck up that typa concept but still the details in his characterization add alot.) but yea this rating could change if i decide to play twewy someday cuz definitely alot of the stuff here can add context but as for the things thats only from neo i think this rating fits well.

counting this as ARR

Im actually jus not gonna type too much about this cuz im surely gonna add a slur or two towards to square enix but its jus not good story wise, quest wise, dialogue wise basically everything aside from the music this shit is ASS but ARR is not why im here, im here for heavensward,shadowbringers and endwalkers so im jus happy im done this shitty start but my expectations for these expansions are at a all time high it would be very sad if i wasted 100s upon 100s of hours for nothing but ima stay positive

edit: post ARR content shows improvement
anyways 100 more hours into heavensward lesgo

If I was to rate this game mostly off story over gameplay like I usually intended to I would give an extra star maybe 1 and a half but the flaws in the gameplay got to the point where I just could not ignore it. Now before I shit on this game I played on 7th heaven mod which actually made this game more playable for me, it was far from perfect but it did enhance the gameplay alot compared to without mods, ok back to shitting on this game.

FF7 does everything that I dislike in a JRPG, the battle mechanics (although this is just a flaw in every old turn based ff game) is just something that always bothered me, the time bar and the real time mechanics, like yea it makes things more challenging and requires strats in a boss fight but for random ass encounters it jus becomes irritating, refering back to the challenging point, the strategy is really repetitve and op for the player, literally every boss fight is open up with big guard, haste and regen, spam all limit breaks and summons, spam ultima and whatever weakness the boss has and replinsh any MP or HP during the process then repeat. 85% of the materia feels useless in the game as long as you have , haste,cure,ultima,maybe comet some sort of shield materia (which i found myself not using for a lot of the boss fights because i would usually just beat them before they do any significant damage to me) and limit breaks then you basically completed the game.

I dont want to seem like i am a jrpg pro and that im going to compare everything to fuckin persona 5 or sum shit because im not i am actually awful at these games but one thing about jrpgs is that they make it addicting so although im bad its still a fun experience and the game at the very least teaches me and allows me to adapt to the mechanics that makes me more than happy to grind for hours but ff7 unfortunately doesnt meet that expectation.

The exploration in this game is one of the worst I have seen in a jrpg, the overworld is the essence of the word boring and tedious, the fact that square enix was so lazy that they couldn't simply LABEL the areas on the map so I wouldnt have to guess or search up where an area is, as something simple as that, it should be easy but no square enix doesnt know that. Other than the highwind(which you get like 75% into the game) the vehicles in this game is just useless or boring, the sub wouldve been more fun and interesting to use if square enix used more quests or areas to search underwater but other than that one easy mission i never used it again, that one big car that you get early in the game to cross the sands forgot its name, was also useless because once you reach it to nibelheim it just stays there. Most of the time in the overworld ( which is a big chunk of the game) I just ran through rushing to the next destination with no interests of doing any of the sidequests which i was fine with letting go of vincent because the quest looked tiresome ( i hesitated on yuffie but i got her tho i never used her) .

The shops in this game are very unrewarding, other than the 2-3 new equipment in every area its basically the same thing, the consumables never upgrade so youre stuck with potions and ether(other than cosmo canyon which jus sells high potions) tht barely do anything in battle when you cross half way thru the game so gathering gil felt very unrewarding. On the same note, grinding in this game feels like a waste of time, like i said before alot of the materias are not consistently useful so grinding ap points didnt feel worth it, majority of the game i was 4-6 underleveled because I didnt bother grinding but i still breeze thru the game, this game also doesnt have animation skip so every random encounter when i want to end it quickly with a summon or ultima i have to watch a slow ass cutscene and then repeat which made grinding even more tedious so I rarely ever played thru a random encounter, i only grinded when there was a save spot and a boss fight is right before it which does the job.

the last point i want to bring up is the level designs, HOLY FUCK was this game annoying when it came to exploring dungeons and whatnot, the biggest part was the shitty camera angles I mean its awful , its awful to the point where i need a IGN guide and a yt video on the side just to help me when i get stuck to look where to next for example a door or ladder or bridge can be right in front of me but it looks like a fucking wall cuz the camera angle makes it seem like one. the minigames specifcally the snowboarding shit is straight up one of the worst things i played in fact that whole level was one of the worst quest, i mean i havent seen a jrpg with so many bad level designs it made me realize how easy of a job it is to satisfy ff7 players with the remake when it comes to level designs and combat. This review makes it sound like this game is a one star which it probably would be if cloud wasnt such a great character, him and sephiroth were the main factors in my motivation to progress thru the game and would i say if it was worth it? Idk tbh bcuz the gameplay is just that bad but this score just shows how much i value story over gameplay (or maybe its to cope with the time i wasted who knows)

TL;DR cloud and sephiroth is hot but the gameplay sucks

ok backloggd deleted my long ass review so im gonna keep this short

cons: pacing sucks(universal square enix flaw),side quests prob the best in the franchise(low bar cuz most ff side quests sucks) but still not that good, side cast sucks, how square enix forces you to explore a linear ass world acting like its a open world, the story can get a little messy and stretched out at times, very inconsistent and uninteresting when its not eikon focused

pros: obviously one of the best combats you will see in a game also some of the best boss fights in video games, amazing voice acting and graphics combined with amazing soundtracks to develop the games setting and dark tone,

Edit: This game aged horribly