This game is one of the best JRPGs that still holds up extremely well with this remade version making it even more accessible.

The game is extremely fun pretty much the entire time. The combat is some of the most fun in terms of action-like combat systems in JRPGs although it does get a little messy later in the game once your party and the enemies are spamming spells and abilities.

There is a pretty unique skill system that is really fun to engage with but can also be safely ignored for the most part (if you wish). You are able to invest points into a variety of skills that allow you to combine healing items, craft weapons, upgrade weapons, add secondary abilities to equipment, play music, cook food, summon a mount, summon superbosses, reduce your stats for more experience....you get the gist.

I think if you are a fan of JRPGs and have never played this you owe yourself a favor to do so.

This game peaks when a party member turns into a giant with 2d sprite jiggle boob physics.

This game has clear inspiration from some classics like FFT and Ogre Battle. Unfortunately this game tries to do so much that it fails on the execution. There were 30 chapters (+ side chapters) to complete and after the first "act" of the game with the initial 12 chapters it continued to slide downhill.

Battles became a slog with sometimes way too many easy to defeat enemy squads. Additionally the chapters get to the point where you are leveraging 20 squads in a single battle, which is often way too many for what needs to be accomplished. Even making all animations fast and removing the battle animations to simply see a quick outcome from each squad versus squad fight the game moves far too slowly.

I will probably still play the sequel and see how things improve because I greatly enjoy the SRPG genre. There is a DLC that apparently expands upon some of the puddle depth mechanics shown in the base game but I can't be bothered to pay even more money and slog through the full game again to enjoy them.

The story of two orphans with magical powers that get put into an abusive magical training school to fight evil. The become so powerful during their training that the game itself is mind numbingly easy (even with some of the difficulty modifiers called "relics" turned on) and the story is mostly ok to downright awful.

I only got the normal ending (which is horrendous) and would need to finish the Collectathon embedded in the game to get the true ending and I will not do so because the game has shown throughout it's entirety that it's not going to change.

Here is a list of things this game has:
-A youtuber NPC who won't shut up
-Characters with 1 good skill, 1 useful skill, and a skill you never use
-A battle system that is fun but barely has any changes after the first 2 hours of the game
-A battle system so easy my golden retriever could beat this game
-The standard JRPG minigame that absolutely sucks here
-Heavy lack of interesting sidequests to do until the very end
-Puzzles that require 0 thought and mostly just waste your time
-Perhaps one of the worst normal endings to a game I've ever seen
-A really cool and fun storyline in the middle of the game that shows this game could have been much better from a story perspective.

Yet I still found myself playing through essentially the entire game (~35 hours) and thus i am resigned to score it at least somewhat favorably. I know for sure that I will never go back and revisit this game.

106 hours on Tactician difficulty for almost 100% completion. I've already started a second playthrough and can't get enough.

Overall a little too easy. It's obvious that Act 1 was in early access for so long because it felt much more well balanced and far less buggy than Act 3. No game crippling bugs but a lot of weird dialogue and quest progression bugs that didn't quite break the game for me. I ignored a somewhat major component of the game by ignoring all illithid power options and that entire skill tree.

This game is so good. If you like JRPGs you basically have to play it if you ask me. Probably a portion/continuation of one of the best stories in gaming.

The worst part is that the difference in the combat between Normal and Hard Mode is a little frustrating. In hard mode there is a lot of loading old saves to get the right Orbment "magic" loadout to properly fight some of the bosses is annoying for the first half of the game or so. On normal you mode you don't even really need to think for the most part. I can overlook these problems with the combat system because even just setting up your equipment and orbments is really fun.

This game is basically what would happen if FF14 was single player. From the overall pacing of the story to the quest design. I think this is a great culmination of FF that feels like it's been work towards since FF12 was released and the turn based system was mostly abandoned. There are certainly some touch ups that can be done but overall the formula felt well put together throughout my entire playthrough of ~55 hours to do everything I could.

Overall the game was far too easy in the action focused mode which was the hardest difficulty to start with. I have barely touched upon the New Game+ difficult (Final Fantasy) but have initial high hopes for it.

The quest design I find tremendous, but I think i've been stockholm'd by playing so much FF14. The main quest with extremely high points of just incredible action and story accompanied by side quests all designed in a way to help the player understand the world and everything else that just keeps on going despite your heroic conquests.

The music is phenomenal throughout and really accentuates the tone of some of the areas you explore and the larger, more important fights that you partake in. While the story was for the most part serviceable, I think the final hour or so of actual game leading up to the end of the game was some of the straight up coolest shit.

The combat felt really fun and snappy. It was like if you took the garbage system from Valkyrie Elysium that came out last summer (I think) and made it good. The biggest problem is that the Eikons, which essentially come down to which special ability do you like the most, didn't matter too much in the initial playthrough since everything was so easy. There are plenty of abilities to pick and choose from and I'm hoping to spend a little more time trying them out and finding all the cool nuances. I was still discovering small intricacies in the combat system even near the very end of my playthrough.

May update this review once I play more of NG+ and potentially dip my toes into the arcade stages.

Fun 2D sidescrolling ARPG type game. Unfortunately after only 6 hours I feel like I'm already getting limited by the resources I am able to collect and the farming component of the game when I just want to continue exploring new areas.

Really fun combat system but if you progress faster than the farming portion of the game then you end up doing 1 damage to enemies and obviously that makes killing bosses harder.

Would recommend if you can tolerate a little bit of grind.

This games story is actual garbage.

Battles themselves are come and go. I think the pinnacle of this game is Chapter 11 and the rest is fine.

Game heavily suffers from the fact that nearly every chapter you are getting two new characters you are forced to use and the new characters are always better than whoever their current comp is in your current party (save for maybe 1 or 2 early members).

The gimmick around the rings is fine I suppose but inheriting skills feels like garbage because anything that feels worth taking (outside of Canto) is way too expensive to justify saving up for it.

I played on maddening.

Great game bogged down by a few horrible sections and way too much "story".

Played on GMGOW. Combat was (for the most part) and vastly improved but also easier compared to 2018. The hardest boss fights were the multi-enemy where you mostly fighting the camera. I think they forgot it wasn't a marvel movie with basically the whole final section.

Making another checklist of realms to visit after completing the game to actually do everything was a big thumbs down. One part of the game (if you've played you know) should be brought out back and shot.

I did all major activities and got most achievements except go back and craft certain armor sets and find every last treasure.