"wait - you haven't played quake?"
~almost everyone who i've gushed about this to game in the past few days

a little about me: i'm partial to industrial grit, my favorite doom games favor grimly edgy atmosphere over 80s thrash worship, i'm a big NIN fan and the downward spiral is one of my top 5 favorite albums. so this should be a no brainer, right?

well - yeah, actually. that's exactly right. throughout my playthrough all i could continually ask myself was, "why the fuck didn't i play this sooner?" and rightfully so. i think the reason quake has eluded me for so long is because its holistic reputation is eclipsed at this point by a diehard multiplayer community that i frankly don't give a shit about. i'm not much of a multiplayer enthusiast for anything - let alone tech-y arena shooters - and honestly i probably would've continued ignoring this absolute fucking masterpiece if not for my pressing curiosity towards trent reznor's involvement

that'd have been a huge mistake; quake is easily the best boomer shooter i've ever played

this is where i could talk about how i adore the weapons and their balancing, the general focus on straightforward maps with powerups everywhere, the difficulty being largely driven by how easy it is to kill yourself in tight spaces - or even the god tier ambient score that has just the right amounts of otherworldly screams and metallic chords strewn about - i COULD go into those things and we could be here for a considerable amount of time - but instead of doing any of that, i'm just going to say that the shambler is one of the greatest enemy designs in any fps. in fact, my feeling towards quake 1 can be summarized roughly with my thoughts on the shambler; he's absolutely perfect. i love this giant, dopey, teethy foreskin man in all his fleshy (not furry - fuck you) glory. and i haven't even begun to MENTION his timbs yet

my mans butters be outright otherworldly

If you are sad that bloober team is going to stomp on everything that Silent Hill 2 is all about with their eventual dogshit remake than don't worry because the best silent hill game made since 3 is right here! Enjoy this game while you can before people try and tell you it’s overrated or nothing but annoying people talk about it and get you mad

After losing my save when the game came out and putting off replaying back to where i was 2 years later i am happy i finally did it. I knew i would love it, i knew it would be amazing and still it blew me away.

This game is something special. I got into ff7 not too long ago, but it already feels like this series has been part of my life for years. OG FF7 and FF7 Remake are truely super fun games, but this one has been cooking so hard it became one of the best meals I've had in my life. I've not been bored after playing for more than 90 hours, which is truely unique for me.

My thoughts:
(+ = (mostly) positive; - = (mostly) negative)
++ Gameplay;
Everything has been improved from the previous game. More fun combat options, smoother gameplay and a wider variety of minigames. I enjoyed exploring all area's, doing all battles and even the tasks that are supposed to be boring/annoying were fun to me. There is sooo much to do, and it never feels forced imo. If the 3rd game is only half as good as this one, it'll still be a super enjoyable game.

++ Music;
Crazy new remixes and new original songs. Never got bored of it and everything fits the mood perfectly. Also for certain scenes it adds so much and gives hints about the story. By that I mean, the visuals might not be what it seems to be thanks to the music that's playing in the background. (which is a good thing)

+ Graphics;
All cutscenes are gorgeous, but during gameplay the light is sometimes overexposed.
All areas are unique, memorable and fun to explore. I like how heavy crowded some places are.

++ Story/Characters;
Let them cook. it's crazy how everything is familiar and new at the same time. This is how you do a remake. You still have the story from the OG game, but at the same time it'll give you so many new things and hints to keep you engaged. The ending was a bit confusing at first, but after looking at it again and again it only gets better and better. I've been watching hours of theories from Maximillian_Dood and it's crazy how much hidden stuff is in the game.


Recommend?
Yes, but play the Remake first. If you haven't play Crisis Core as well.
I'd recommend playing the OG as well to see all thats different, but it's not a must. Should be fine to play that after the remakes as well.

They have outdone themselves

Rebirth makes the original remake look like a demo LOL. I am simply blown away with this game by every aspect of it and crave to continue to play more even after finishing the story to clear up side stuff I missed. It is hard for me to comprehend how anyone can play this title and dislike it even if you are not a fan of certain story changes.

STORY

THERE WILL BE NO SPOILERS ABOUT ANYTHING.

This is where most fans divide with rebirth. To explain I will not talk about anything within the story but I will simply state my opinion quickly before moving on. To put it simply, when the story is the original it's as amazing as you remembered but when the story is rebirth’s you may or may not like it. Personally I love what is being done here with the expansion of characters and the world but I can also understand why hardcore fans of the original may not be a fan of it. Just enjoy it for what it is and come to your conclusion when we get the final game as everything will most likely be answered with that game. For me it's silly to blindly hate when we do not have the completed story in our hands. All in all I loved the story and certain changes that were done.


Graphics

The games world is simply breathtaking and honestly hosts some of the best town visuals I have seen period in gaming. You can move to literally any spot , look out in the distance and have art worthy of a picture. One thing that blew me away was how NOTHING would load in as if you were on a highpoint of an area you can literally look out to the distance to places you were just at or areas you may not have been to that you want to go to. Its things like this that take the immersion to a whole new level with this game that makes you cherish every moment you move around the world. However, there are some short fallings as some ground textures looked horrendous and a few textures that didn’t seem correct but overall the game is gorgeous. I played in performance mode to get that 60FPS boost so I did lose some visual performance but the game still looked amazing.


Characters

You love them all like I love them all.... Unless if you are Chadley.


Gameplay

Besides the sheer hugenous of the game what also caught me off guard was the amount of content thrown at you that was good. To explain, with open world titles side content can feel like a drag as it sometimes doesn’t offer enough to really keep you entertained enough to want to do it. With FF7 rebirth you will WANT to do everything as the side content is insanely addicting. Side quests can be hit or miss but mostly were a hit and all the mini games were very well done and fun to play. Each time you hit a new area of the game you most likely will want to do everything the map has to offer before continuing the story and I would highly recommend it as its very fun content and will give you lots of items to use for the next story portion. Furthermore, combat is just as fun with many synergies , spells and unlocks to mess around with making you want to change things up constantly. The biggest surprise for me was Queen’s blood as I fell in love with the mini game. It's a very simple card game that turns pretty complex with specific deck builds as you progress the story for it but Queens blood is insanely addicting and makes me really want an online mode for it. Finally, the combat simulation is back as just as challenging as the original remake but very fun to fight against summons. They really knocked it out of the park with its content and gameplay that almost makes you think this game isn’t real.

My only real complaint

Chadley is in the game.


In the end


FF7 Rebirth IMO is a masterpiece that should be played by all FF fans. While some story elements may not sit well with you there is no denying the masterfully crafted game they have created here. FF7 rebirth is an almost dream-like game that doesn’t happen often. I can only hope you all enjoy it as much as I did. There is a lot I didn’t get into as I really didn’t want to get into ANYTHING specific since for me seeing all the new content the game was throwing my way not knowing what it was going to be was such a blast so I wanted to refrain from talking about WHAT mini games and side stuff were here besides queens blood which you most likely have heard of by now.


THIS IS A MUST BUY AND 200% WORTH THE ASKING PRICE.

This is a game that for some reason is completely eluding me when I try writing up something more structured on it, but I will say that I really liked a lot about this and wanted to say SOMETHING in regards to it, so here:

This is the one kind of remake that I won't be an annoying hater about, it really sets itself apart from the original game in a ton of ways and feels like its own experience that just uses the same foundation as another game, rather than trying to just be a smoother rehash that removes a lot of the weirdness of said game.

Making Midgar an entire game was a choice that I feel didn't fully work out in all aspects because there is just a bit too much time in between the big story beats, slowing the pacing to an absolute crawl at times.

The "filler" chapters are cool for the way that they try expanding upon the insignificant aspects of the city to reinforce the player's connection with the location as a whole.

The sheer amount of gay energy exuded every time Cloud and Sephiroth exist on screen together is insane.

35 hours of Midgar unfortunately means around 30 hours of seeing very similar rundown urban environments or factories, and that gets super tiring.

I love how good basically every attack feels to use, and the ATB system here is a great way to try encouraging switching between characters constantly.

Unfortunately combat is also easy to the point where I never really felt the need to properly strategise outside of a couple specific encounters, which ended up being my favourite as a result of making me properly interact with the game's systems. It doesn't help that Cloud just feels by far the strongest in a lot of cases.

More of the game should've involved Cloud wearing a dress

I love the way NPC flavour text is handled here, it adds a ton of life to the world when you just hear snippets of these random conversations as you're running through a crowd.

The side quests suck for the most part, especially in chapter 14 where there's a downright egregious amount of backtracking to be done.

I adore the main cast and do think it's the one aspect of this game that I like considerably more than in the original, even though I liked them all a lot there too.

I wish Cloud was real and that I could make out with him.

I am so glad that they kept in the Shinra Building emergency stairs and made the ascent EVEN LONGER, all while letting you listen to Barret complain the entire time you ran up.

The last stretch of the game had so many batshit plot revelations one after the other and it makes me really interested to see the direction that Rebirth will take.

I've played a lot of FF7 related stuff in preparation for Rebirth and I think it's driven me a bit insane, almost feels like purgatory, still looking forward to it though!!!

The old Resident Evil is dying, and a new Resident Evil struggles to be born; now is the time of zombies.

I don't think that this exists in the space that it wants to. It's too linear and not strict enough to play like Resident Evil 2; it's not fun and frenetic enough to play like Resident Evil 4. It exists in this in-between area of not really living up to what came before, and it fails to sufficiently set the stage for what's to come. Between the linearity, the immense amount of resources you're constantly being given, and the frequent scripted sequences that consist of little more than holding forward and the run button, Resident Evil 3 Remake more closely resembles Resident Evil 6 than it does any other game in the series. I hope you haven't gotten sick of the words Resident Evil yet.

This is a game with zero restraint. Jill walks into the sewers with a full stack of shotgun shells to pump into the faces of the hunter gammas with their instant kill attacks. Carlos starts his side of the story with an assault rifle(!) that holds 30 rounds in a magazine(!!) and a reserve 200 rounds(!!!) in his pouches. Both characters rely on a counter mechanic that's both completely broken and often useless in equal measure; either there's a swarm of zombies in front of you and dodging one will throw you directly into the next one, or there's just a single zombie and there's no reason not to fish for the perfect dodge so that you can auto-aim onto their heads for easy crits. Just about everything that isn't a standard zombie or Nemesis — yes, Nemesis is only about as dangerous as a standard zombie — has an attack that instantly kills you, but typewriters are fucking everywhere. Often the most optimal play is to walk through an area, fish for as many dodges as you can get, and then save for free once you clear a couple of rooms. Sure, you'll probably fuck your dodge up and die, but dying will never actually cost you more than a couple of minutes. Nothing is threatening, mechanically or narratively.

I've seen a lot of complaints that the remake ruins Jill's character, and I'm not entirely sure that's true, because Jill Valentine is a different character in every single game that she's been in. I'm not convinced that Capcom has ever had any idea what they want her to be. The deepest characterization she's ever gotten was in the original Resident Evil, where she was a sort-of parallel to Chris; she was smart, and a skilled pianist, and vaguely nice. From there, though, I don't think she's ever had anything consistent enough that you could call a "character": Resident Evil 5 turns her into a brainwashed babe in a bodysuit; Revelations makes her into something akin to Batman from the Arkham games, complete with Detective Mode; Death Island ends with Chris remarking that he's glad to have "the old Jill back", but which Jill he's talking about is left as an exercise for the viewer. And, in keeping with this pattern, she's a different character in Resident Evil 3 Remake as well. I've given you a lot of preamble to lead into the fact that I don't really care for the way she's written here. There's just something about the glib quipping that constantly undercuts the severity of the situation everyone is in. Nemesis stumbles out of a burning alleyway into a river and Jill practically looks to camera like Office Jim and says "bitch can't even swim". She doesn't really seem to give a fuck about Nemesis at all. I mean, I get it, considering how you can lob one grenade at his feet to instantly down him, or just walk away at a brisk pace to lose him completely, but I'm hardly sold on the idea that I should be afraid of him when our protagonist is rolling her eyes whenever he's on-screen. People say that she swears too much, or that she's too rude to Carlos when she finds out he's Umbrella, but I don't think those are at all the problem. It's no surprise that everyone seems to have universally attached themselves to Carlos, largely because he's always ready to throw himself back into the fray, he can crack a joke, he's a stone-cold professional — all things that I imagine Jill isn't in this solely because they didn't want to have two characters with the same personalities, and not because they thought it made sense in-universe.

In a series that already isn't renowned for being well-written, the writing in this is poor. There are just so many bad lines in this. The aforementioned quip about bitches who need to be taught how to swim is one, but it stands shoulder-to-shoulder with other complete misfires like "get off my train, shitbird!" and "I'm goddamn Nathaniel Bard!". Bard himself is easily the worst part of the game; it's not enough that his rant to the nurse is written like a PSA about workplace harassment, but his voice actor is fucking terrible. The lines he's given are trash, but he is giving by-far one of the worst performances I've heard in a AAA game in a long while. It's no coincidence that Mikhail is also doing a really bad, forced Slavic accent, because it's the same fucking guy doing both voices. I don't know how he made it through casting for two different characters. It probably shouldn't be a surprise that this is a Bang Zoom! production, because this is dubbed exactly like a bad seasonal anime, all the way down to the lip flaps regularly not even matching up. Half of the in-engine cutscenes look like Kung-Pow.

The game as a whole isn't terrible, but I would have been nervous if I had played this after the Resident Evil 2 Remake and before Resident Evil 4 Remake. It's clear that the team who worked on this didn't really understand why Resident Evil 2 worked. It wasn't just because the hallways were tight and the inventory was restrictive; it was how it kept making safe areas unsafe, how Mr. X was practically invincible and constantly pursuing you so that you couldn't afford to take it slow, how one zombie represented a drain on your limited resources even if you played it optimally. The irony that the game that introduced Nemesis does Nemesis worse than its predecessor.

It's not really worth recommending to people who liked Resident Evil 2, and it's not worth recommending to people who liked Resident Evil 4. It's a game that doesn't know what it should be, and some very obvious budget and time restrictions make this feel more like a bad piece of DLC rather than a standalone sequel to one of the best releases of the past decade.

I'll have to check out Resident Evil 3: Nemesis now, because I'm curious just how much was lost in remaking it.

All my life as a Nintendo-clutching child, Final Fantasy VII’s reputation had loomed high and large like the towering remains of an ancient giant. The internet was yet ruled by the previous dynasty of game-people, and its inescapable legacy had been etched into the marble pillars of their digital shrines. In a generation made of generationally-defining masterpieces (or so it went), the wily double-crossing traitors at SquareSoft defected to the PlayStation and unleashed their secret weapon — the most generationally defining-ist game of all. My blood boiled for a feud long ended. I may have only known caricatures and tall tales of its porcupine-haired Hot Topic-lookin’ Link-like, its pioneering the “first death in videogames” (oh, please), its dumpster-esque graphics and its wildly convoluted plot, but that was all I needed to hear. And besides, it was one of those reviled JRPGs. But I’d gone to college and played Chrono Trigger by the time I received a text message while waiting for the subway one cold, January evening. It assured me that Final Fantasy VII was a soaring epic, that it deserved its reputation and, most shocking of all, that it had dethroned perennial front-runner Twilight Princess as his “favorite game.”

Now, yes, Twilight Princess may kinda suck, but coming from this particular text message author, I could not dismiss the thought. This review, my recent awakening to the potential of this genre, and the announcement of Final Fantasy VII’s imminent release on Nintendo Switch all miraculously collided into a Total Eclipse of anticipation. I played Final Fantasy IV in preparation, took a pit stop to flail at Metal Slimes, and at last, in the dead of night, I picked up Final Fantasy VII the instant it became available.

In the six years between IV and VII, cinematography, pre-rendered graphics, and 3D animation weren’t just possibilities, they were being put to use in grand, ambitious spectacles. Removed from the context of their era, those visuals lend themselves to an unmistakable style, a crusty collage of aesthetics delivered with such tenacity that I can’t help but love 'em. The sweeping orchestration of its intro spills over with so much confidence that, for the tiniest microscopic fraction of a second, we’re not worthy. But beneath it all, I could feel the same heart as its ancient predecessor beating within. An act of terrorism, a weathered protagonist, a second job whose conclusion results in a meeting with the last survivor of a magic tribe, a love triangle, a death, a mad scientist, a cosmic entity — but all of them are strengthened by a more experienced staff, reinvigorated by a whole host of new tricks. But of course, with new priorities also come new compromises.

Final Fantasy VII trades in FFIV’s expressive classes for a modular Materia system, leaving characterization to body language and a newly-dynamic dialogue format. Limit Breaks are about all that’s left to get across party personality via gameplay, but it’s sure that those designs and scenarios will be enough to endear the player, because by minimizing the influence and development of their specialties, it gives us free rein to focus on our favorite people. Its three-man battles poked my Chrono Trigger nerve, though they should’ve rattled my Super Mario RPG bones. Without that same commitment to action or an addition to rival the tech system, it translates into an overt simplification; a transparent effort to bump up Cloud’s polygon count. Minigame setpieces ranging from rad to horrible litter the plot, sometimes boneheadedly positioned between affecting story moments. But look at that. As much as I can scrutinize these tottering steps toward a more complete visual experience, I can’t rightly say those moments didn’t reach me.

In its wild world-building, its earnest explorations of life and identity, its most honest character interactions and its simplest plot devices, Final Fantasy VII earned more than my respect, it got my admiration. It makes a whole heap of mistakes, but the passion and excitement of its developers circa 1997 transcends time, it’s infectious. It revels in Blade Runnerish grunge and solemn subjects, but won’t hesitate to fling out the goofiest nonsense with genuine glee. Even when I was laughing at FFVII’s expense, I felt like it was in on the joke. It sold me on its weirdest twists, endeared me to its characters, and swept me up in its melodrama. Most of all, it’s not afraid to say something real. It packs that train full of everything it’s got and rides to the end of the line, blasting Nobuo Uematsu’s incredible soundtrack all the way. For better and worse, Final Fantasy VII is fearless.

Mega Man fans are too receptive to Capcom's bullshit. Their sheer incompetence during the 7th gen has been well-documented, and all they've done since to rectify their countless missteps is a single Mega Man game. Despite the fanbase turning around and making MM11 the best-selling game in the franchise, we're at 5 years since its release, the 35th anniversary has came and went and Capcom has shown no sign of a new game. Instead, we got X Dive.

Now unlike most people, I'm no stranger to gacha games. I've tried many, and I've enjoyed many. As a result of my lack of seething hatred for them, I was more hopeful than most when the game was first announced. I went into it with an open mind, lasted about a week, and then dropped it out of boredom. It's not a good gacha game, nor is it an acceptable Mega Man game by any stretch of the imagination. Haphazard level design that felt AI-generated. Grindy progression that is simultaneously boring and tedious. Borderline incomprehensible english translation. From head to toe, the game hardly had any redeeming factors. Playing as various characters across the entire franchise would be neat, if not for the fact that playing the game itself is a complete slog. I would genuinely rather beat X6 and X7 back-to-back than consider booting this garbage up again. And then they had the gall to charge 30 bucks for this slop, despite essentially just removing the gacha system and leaving the rest of the game's myriad problems. You can buy entire series' in the franchise for that price.

The existence of the game is damn near insulting. Hell, we can't even say the game is funding new projects, like the Star Ocean gacha or Fate/Grand Order did, given the game failed and died after a woeful 2-3 years (and there are no new projects to speak of). Not to mention they're making and selling NFTs to promote it too.

It's basically another episode of Bad Boxart Mega Man. The fanservice at least could've been cool if it weren't for Capcom's continued incompetence and the franchise circling the drain. And if I hear one more Capcom cockguzzler say "this should be the standard for mobages", you're gonna see me on the evening news.

Does anybody else get exhausted of our cultural tendency to immediately lump any given piece of media into concrete categories like "good" or "bad", the latter often attributing a sort of spiritual disposability to said piece of media? Like, in a vacuum, I guess it's not the worst thing we can do, and it's something you shouldn't be ashamed of doing or something you have to stop doing outright if you just really love or really hate something, but it does tend to have this knock on effect where we don't have to engage with media once we've categorized something as either "peak" or "dogshit".

Because of that sort of black-and-white mindset, Gamer Discourse just ended up eviscerating all discussion of Final Fantasy XIII when it came out, and in all honesty probably bled into the potential enjoyment other people may have otherwise received from the game. I'm not a psychologist I can't prove that, but like, it happened to me for a long time until I broke out of that mindset! Not saying people have to suddenly like FF13, or that we have to completely flip the discourse around towards largely positive, but it's pretty cool that Final Fantasy XIII even exists imho!! Like, how many AAA sci-fi fantasy RPG epics were we even getting during that era of gaming? I won't say it's as overall satisfying or as complete feeling of a work when up against most other Final Fantasy titles, and maybe even other RPGs of similar budget and scope, but I enjoyed my time with it despite it kind of having a Wind Waker-ian malaise to it (I mean that in both a good and bad way, but mostly a good way!! btw while we're hanging out in the parentheses dimension misusing basic conventions of punctuation and general formatting, does anybody else want to eat the little spheres in the Crystarium? They look like tasty little candies to me, probably even tastier than materia).

The basic combat system is contentious for a reason, but it's kinda sick as hell in a way I both love and despise. It's like, attempting to replicate the feeling of turn-based combat -- which is a style of gameplay that typically abstracts interactions between entities for the sake of compartmentalizing actions to allow strategy to be coherent for the player -- while ostensibly (and correct me if I'm wrong about how this game actually functions) being an action game that the player only tangentially controls. Even in the event that the player has chosen to manually select abilities, the other two thirds of your party still remain uncontrollable, but they function within the specific physical minutiae of an action game that Square Enix has created but that we are not allowed to play directly. In opposition to similar systems like maybe Chrono Trigger or Dragon Quest IX, characters and enemies move in realtime, collide with other models, and can get hurt by splash damage (a particularly frustrating aspect of the combat system when afaik you cannot change the position of a character without making them perform an action that would require them to move); it's not always an immediately pertinent aspect of the game's combat, but it's something that remained on my mind consistently after I noticed it.

The result, along with its almost proto-Yokai Watch-esque approach to RPG strategy, is combat that can often make you feel like you just coached somebody else into getting a SSS rank in a Devil May Cry game, but equally ends up being probably the closest a video game has ever gotten to replicate the feeling of what it's like to drive a car in a dream? Idk if anybody else has dreams like that where you're in a dream, and you're trying to drive a car, and it is NOT working AT ALL, and you kind of just swerve all the over place and kinda noclip through dream terrain until it gets too scary and you wake up. Maybe that's just me?

Dream logic is also a pretty fuckin' apt way to describe Final Fantasy XIII's plotting and narrative delivery. Final Fantasy XIII is like an obscure OVA of itself that's been spread out across 40 hours? It's feeling abridged in this bizarre but kinda charming way like, damn I shoulda read the manga of this one before buying the VHS, I guess. So much of what happens on screen is just not explained diegetically at all, which I wasn't a huge fan of in Final Fantasy VIII either, but I heard you could go to Selphie's custom GeoCities site in-game to see what the fuck everything is and means. Never did it myself, but I love that there it's at least seemingly diegetic. To be clear, I think in-game encyclopedias are cool as hell and I'm glad it exists in Final Fantasy XIII, every game needs a Piklopedia-esque feature as far I'm concerned, but I kinda like ending up there out of curiosity and not so much obligation. Maybe it's because I have issues with authority? I don't like being told what to do? I dunno. For what it's worth though, I don't think it outright ruined my enjoyment of Final Fantasy XIII.

I probably enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII more than at least three or four other mainline Final Fantasy titles, and I think it's unabashedly one of the most Final Fantasy entries in the series. I love the character designs (Lightning and Fang in particular Appeal to My Interests), I had fun with the combat sometimes, music is sick as hell; the visual concept of Cocoon and Pulse is powerful shit, though it feels underutilized both functionally and thematically. The game overall has this really rad 80s/90s anime vibe but with those sleek 00s sci-fi aesthetic touches; it's almost like Toriyama and team were making a secret AAA Phantasy Star title. The game is way more gorgeous than it has any right to be, which is unfortunately sometimes all the game is.

I wanted to kick down the door and scream "IT'S NOT HALLWAYS IT'S NOT HALLWAYS" so badly, but unfortunately, it is definitely hallways. Which isn't inherently a bad thing, Final Fantasy VII Remake's also hallways! But I think what makes it particularly excruciating in Final Fantasy XIII is that that's kind of all it is, and many environments repeat ad nauseam (that fuckin' forest level was definitely overkill with the same exact environmental structures over and over with only a couple narrative chokepoints to break up the pace), an issue that I don't remember the other Final Fantasy with a similar structure, Final Fantasy X, really having. This isn't something that's necessarily new to Final Fantasy at least, I think my least favorite aspect about going back to the pre-PSX Final Fantasy titles is The Caves. I wanna say Final Fantasy V was probably the best about it, but it got really bad in Final Fantasy VI sometimes and that game manages to be good as hell in spite of that.

Except, Final Fantasy VI does share some other issues with Final Fantasy XIII, like awkward scripts and translation, but I suppose it's a lot more noticeable in Final Fantasy XIII when real people are speaking dialogue that no person would ever say ever. I think my favorite "this translator was maybe being overworked god I hope they paid them enough at least" moment was when a villain told one of the good guys that "the next time you open your eyes will be the last" which like, what does that even fucking mean in the context of English. Like I've taken a decade of Japanese studies so I know it's most likely a direct translation of a vaguely idiomatic expression for "waking up", but it's so fucking funny that it got to the voice actor phase and nobody questioned it. I'm not even like, clowning on it, it's just extremely interesting to me.

Either way, my point isn't to say Final Fantasy VI or any other Final Fantasy is actually the Bad Game, my point is that Final Fantasy XIII is a reflection of the games that came before it both conceptually and logistically and maybe we should give it a break sometimes because it's a decently enjoyable experience when you aren't being cranky about the parts that maybe aren't perfect. And I won't lie, I definitely got cranky a few times; ironically I got the most crankiest at the point of the game that most people claim is "when it gets good". Friend, the game was already good, putting in a Xenoblade level isn't gonna suddenly make the game worth it, you either bought into it by that point, or you didn't, honestly.

One more thing that's sorely missing from Final Fantasy XIII though: minigames or minigame adjacent activities. Like, I think in this game of all games, a little extra would've gone a long way cuz sooooo fucking much of the game is just fighting the same exact guys over and over. I don't even think there's puzzles? I hated the puzzles in Final Fantasy X, but by the end of Final Fantasy XIII I almost missed them. They also find ways to put more of the same enemies in levels that by all means should NOT have those enemies, and like I get it, it's an issue that Final Fantasy X ran into as well, at a high enough fidelity it's probably not possible to make enough unique models/enemy types to fill out an entire 40 hour RPG's worth of content, but the lack of variety is notably pretty rough in XIII. I think the best signifier of that is how early and often you fight behemoths, a mob that's typically reserved for like, the last few dungeons of a given Final Fantasy title if not the final level outright. Plus, battles end up feeling pretty exhausting like, at least in Final Fantasy X the bosses with a bajillion health points are being fought via a fully turn-based system; the battles are strategically more simple in XIII, but they always took a lot more out of me due to the relatively fast pace of the action itself and the amount of moment-to-moment babysitting you're engaging in.

I don't really feel like getting into spoiler territory for this one, not that I think it's even possible to spoil anything about Final Fantasy XIII that aren't things you'd find out in the first few chapters or so anyways, but either way, lemme awkwardly transition to a conclusion where I talk about Lightning. She's probably in my like, top 10 favorite fictional characters designs despite Final Fantasy XIII not even breaching my top 100 favorite games. She's like, if you combined Utena Tenjou with Cloud Strife and Squall Leonhart. She kinda sucks really bad as a person early on, but I like that she grows from her whole "being a cop who punches people for no good reason" phase after getting scolded by a lesbian for being that way. Pretty excited to see how they simultaneously ruin her characterization and make her even cooler in the other two games in the trilogy! Half expecting Lightning Returns to end up as my favorite of the trilogy since it looks like it's the funniest, but we'll see.

Also I originally had this whole bit at the beginning about the tangential relationship being Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) and Final Fantasy XIII, but I dropped it cuz I couldn't really work it into a broader cohesive point, but I think they're cool fucked up 7th gen console zeitgeist siblings, and my brain just associates them with each other cuz of that. Anyways, this discussion is pretty much pointless because we ALL know and have unanimously agreed upon as a culture that Final Fantasy XV is the actual best Final Fantasy.

When a reviewer gives a negative opinion of a well-received game, you'll commonly see comments that the author is just biased against the genre. While bias is always a factor, I don't think that's particularly relevant criticism of an inherently subjective style of writing. Reviews reflect a single person's personal experience of the game, and shouldn’t be taken as anything more than that. Each review contributes to the larger understanding of the game, which should be used as the guiding point for consumers more than any singular piece. That's why it's important for people of different backgrounds to contribute to the forum and represent a game’s entire potential audience. In short, a reviewer should simply be honest about their biases and not pull punches about their true feelings. In the spirit of this, I would like to say that I am very biased against JRPG's, but I would also like to say that I absolutely loved Final Fantasy 7. I was dreading playing it for the longest time, because it's not a genre I'm interested in, and because I already knew about The Big Spoiler. I figured that without the impact of the biggest emotional moment, it would just be a slog with standard RPG combat and nothing to keep me motivated. However, not only was the combat way better than I was expecting, the story had more twists and turns that completely caught me off guard. I'm almost thankful for The Big Spoiler because it shielded the other reveals from being talked about, ones that I think are much more satisfying and interesting. While I want to dissect what made it so enjoyable, it’s probably better for me to temper the positive vibes, because it's received enough of that over the years. I don’t have any unique perspective to share, and it’s so widely beloved that you should check it out regardless of the specifics.

I played Silent Hill 2 first because I heard Silent Hill doesn't really hold up, that 2 is better, and the stories aren't connected anyway. However, my question now is why do people think Silent Hill doesn't hold up. I can understand distaste for 3d graphics as lifelike as origami, but this game accomplished a lot with its limited resources. Its atmosphere still works amazingly well, and the level design is even better than Silent Hill 2's. It's different from its successor, but not necessarily a lesser game. When you play it, you might start by thinking it looks a little rough, but by the end you'll wish more games had such an engrossing world to explore.