I genuinely have no words to describe the absolute peak that this game is. Probably my favorite version of the FF job system, a story that, while short and simple, really lends itself to its gameplay and characters, and most importantly, is an amazing love story to the entire mainline FF franchise (up until this point at least).

The game's world is based off the world of Final Fantasy 1, but with two major deviations. The biggest deviation is that our main cast members are not the Warriors of light from FF1, and our protagonist, jack Garland, was the easiest one to notice out of the bunch. Its not really a spoiler, the game never hides his name and pretty much every trailer and developer interview after the first one pretty explicitly said "yeah this is an alternate universe telling an origin story of this world's version of Garland". And it does a great job. For as much as some people found Jack's attitude and nature worthy of joking with, the game directly acknowledges why he is the way he is, explains it, and runs with it. They not only explain who he is, why he and his friends all dress so modern compared to the otherwise fantasy characters in the game, but also his memory problems, thirst for violence against Chaos and most importantly, how he becomes the Big Bad of FF1 when he's the protagonist of this title. And its all done very well despite this not being your traditional FF game. The other major change from FF1 is that every stage in this game is based off a previous Final Fantasy title, called "dimensions" in this game. The Sunken Shrine holding the water crystal is a mako reactor from FF7. The pirates in Pravaoka, instead of being in the town like in FF1, are instead in a nearby cave modelled after Sastasha from FF14, etc.

The gameplay is what you would expect from Team Ninja's action rpgs like Nioh, fast paced and stylish combat with a high skill ceiling, grindy postgame and a lot of build variety, combined with the traditional FF job system. Every job has a unique action that can only be used while playing as that job, like the Thief having the "steal" command that lets you steal an enemy's ability (this is in addition to already being able to steal certain abilities by soul guarding, meaning Thief can be used to create a character built around using enemy skills), or the mage classes being able to use magic. There are also, in addition to the starting jobs, more advanced jobs that you unlock by levelling up the existing jobs, like levelling Lancer to unlock Dragoon, but these advanced jobs aren't just "better" versions of the basic jobs either, as using the previous example, the Dragoon job can use the jump ability, but not the spear throw ability that the lancer has. Dragoon can also use axes, in addition to spears, giving you variety in how to play. You might like to fight with a sword and shield, but as several jobs can use swords and shields, you'll need to pick which job compliments your playstyle the best. This is of course, not even getting into the postgame gear and level grind, or the extra changes made to the combat system with each dlc, (which I will review separately) all of which add to the already expansive buildcrafting that the game has.

There are a few downsides here, some of the sidequests (that can either unlock more sidequests, or crafting options) are hidden within the levels of the game, and while some of them are easy to find, there were two or three that were hidden fairly well, and when the postgame is basically nothing but grinding for better equipment and levelling your jobs to create builds, not having the full crafting system available can seriously affect you. If you don't have the dlc, there's no extra story after you beat the game, you can replay previously completed stages at increasingly difficult difficulties, but that's it. Having some secret bosses or mission modifiers would have made this grind significantly go down better (which the dlc does fix btw, although you'll probably want level 200 gear and nearly maxed out job levels before starting). There's no hub area in the base game, which isn't usually an issue with a game like this, but since the game has optional dialogue with npcs after major story beats, needing to go into a menu to hear it instead of just walking through town is a minor downside. Especially if it would have allowed you to actually see the changes to the world being spoken of.

Without the dlc, this is an AMAZING love letter and tribute to the entire FF series, ending where it all began, with four Warriors of Light setting off to the Chaos Shrine to rescue Princess Sarah from the clutches of the villainous Garland. Closing off the game's story with an amazing conclusion that wraps up jack's storyline and ties it all back in a way that, if they ended it right there, i'm sure nobody would complain.

but WITH the dlc... This might become one of my favorite action games of all time.

This game has its strengths when it's story kicks in. It focuses very heavily on Cloud's mental instability, and his relationship with the rest of the gang, specifically Aerith and Tifa. If Remake was the Buildup for Aerith's story, this is the payoff, and if this is the buildup for Tifa's story, then Remake 3 will be the payoff (assuming they have the common sense to follow up plot points from this game, and follow the original game's narrative). The combat is significantly improved from Remake with some characters having aerial attacks and abilities, in addition to a generally improved moveset, and we get new Synergy abilities and skills, where two party members team up to do one attack.

However the open world unfortunately fails in my opinion. It's far from the worst open world in gaming, and has plenty of things I like (each region is treated as its own mini-open world, and for most of the game fast travel is contextual), sadly though most of the areas arent that unique to explore, and you could remove the open world entirely from some regions and the narrative would be completely unaffected. This is ignoring the obvious "open world checklist" that sadly the game has. If they severely cut down on side content to maybe two or three big things per region as opposed to a bunch of smaller things, it would be far better.

Issues that you might personally have with the narrative aside, I'm sure we can all agree that's where this game shines. It's story and it's characters, in both the main story and the sidequests. Just sadly I feel as if there is just far too much extra content that ends up dragging down the experience if you are a completionist.

7/10 for it's story, characters and gameplay. 4/10 for everything required for platinum.

Alone in the Dark is a pretty good investment for anyone who's a fan of survival horror games to look back on and see where we have come from. The game is more difficult than it needs to be with some questionable controls or camera angles, especially during specific sections requiring platforming, or aiming a bow down a hallway to shoot at something (that is also shooting you).
The game does have some fun with its gameplay structure, which I give it credit for. You can skip the enemy encounters in the first room entirely by simply blocking their entrances, there's a room with a healing flask inside but going in risks more harm than the payout, there are books in the library you can read that causes your character to contort and bang their head against the floor (or just float for a second before dying). I'd say the biggest flaw is the trial and error gameplay structure that arises from being a game of its age.

If you know what you are doing, it is a very short experience. If going in blind, a pretty decent older game that you can see spawn a whole genre, just be sure to keep that giant pot of human soup handy for a few rooms down.

Overall, this is personally my favorite way to experience dragon quest 1 and 2. Maybe the super Famicom version is better though, but I haven't played it since it's in Japanese only.

But everything about these is a huge step up from the NES versions and I mean that in the most loving way possible. I understand also that this version is based off the super Famicom version, which might explain why, but even still, the Switch version is also based off the super Famicom version, and I think that game looks ugly as sin so I rate this one higher.

Dragon Quest 1 is the one that spots the most obvious improvements for me compared to its NES counterpart. We have a new intro showing the princess get kidnapped, battle animations for the attacks, more detailed towns, NPCs are more expressive (such as shivering when talking about how scared they are) and so on. Dragon Quest 2 was already such a massive improvement from 1 that you can already imagine that all of these improvements but added to DQ2 make it feel even more like a proper, modern RPG.

In fact, the only reason why this is 3.5 stars and not 4 or 5 is because its still literally just DQ1&2. DQ1 is, despite all the improvements, still a very, very basic game. And DQ2, while still being very enjoyable, even moreso in this package, is still ultimately a flawed experience.

For fans of the series, or for first timers, I cannot recommend this (or the super Famicom version probably since they are virtually the same aside from graphics from what I hear). It's an amazing bundle of two games, neither is horribly long, it gives you a good taste of the franchise and overall made great use of the extra technology between the decade between the original games and this remake.

While the earlier levels can be a bit lacking due to many reasons, once this game kicks in, it kicks in HARD. This is one of the best online games i've ever played when we combine the entire first saga (ARR-EW) as one game and im still not done with it. And the narrative alone puts it near the top of the Final Fantasy series. I cannot recommend it enough, especially with how generous the free trial is.

I'm giving these 3 stars simply because it's just for ARR, the other expansions I'm all rating separately as well.

The game has some flaws with the pacing of it's story and the handling of some of its characters, but it's strengths are very strong and I love every moment of them. I love the environmental storytelling and how even when giving exposition dumps in dialogue, they still try to keep it sounding natural (although admittedly, this does cause some things to be a bit implied rather than directly stated, but there's an in-game lore book to solve that issue.)

It's an amazing dark fantasy version of final fantasy. It's given us some of the best voice acting this series has had yet. It's world is simultaneously a tribute to the world's of classic FF, as well as its own dark and dying world taking some of these classic elements and turning them on their heads.

Easily my goty for 2023.