As soon as I first laid my eyes on this game, seeing what it was aiming for, what inspirations it wore on its sleeve, I knew that I’d love it.

One of my favourite TV shows as a child that I still adore today was “Knightmare”, for those not in the know it was High Fantasy style competition with child participants, a dungeon master like host and what I guess would be best described as crude “virtual reality”.

One child would adorn a helmet that meant they could only see the floor in front of them, a bag to hold items and shield bearing an eye which would be the (in universe) way that this adventurers three friends, “far away” could give out advice and command the dungeoneer on his journey.
The adventurer in real life was on a TV set, using green screen (probably blue actually) technology the child would venture through dungeons, avoiding traps, speaking to monsters and actors being NPCs.
The three back at base would not just be guiding the dungeoneer simply where to move but would huddle in and discuss what answers to give when something such as, a spooky golem, would ask them a riddle.
It was brilliant, at the time it felt like magic but also clearly felt like, because it was, a game.
Treguard, the gentleman who acted as the guide, was a real life equivalent to tooltips, one that, if memory serves me correctly, was a bit more obvious as the show moved on and the children continued to fail to see the finish.

Cryptmaster pulls a lot of its flavour from this show but specifically its main gimmick.
In Knightmare they would acquire magical spells to help solve puzzles and with the command “Spell casting” they would need to spell out the word letter by letter.
In Cryptmaster you can say anything and spelling out the correct things are not only your answers to puzzles but the way to fight combat, learn about the characters and even more.

From the start you learn the party’s names by typing them out, you soon come across a chest but your undead brain does not have all its memories intact and the same goes for our leader, guide and companion the titular Cryptmaster.
Rather than just pop open this chest and get an item, each thing you find is a guessing game.
Your only information is how many letters are in the name of the item and asking old Crypty to tell you what it is based on commands much like a retro text adventure “LOOK”, “SMELL”, “TASTE”, all these and more are commands you give and our undead guide gives us his opinion.
Some of these you will get straight away and some you’ll be drawing either literally or in your mind to figure out what he could mean. Afterwards you aren’t awarded with the item, most of them you would have no use for, but you are rewarded letters that fill in blank spaces near each of your party.
This ongoing game of “hangman” is where Cryptmaster’s version of levelling comes in.
Fill all the spaces or type out the word once you can see it and that will either teach you a new ability for a character or give you a little piece of their background.
You can’t skip ahead so simply just typing over and over is only going to give you confused and sometimes sarcastic replies from your guide.

Now you’ve started learning these abilities and attacks you are able to take on the many enemies that roam the dungeon. The game gives you a choice of real-time (sort of active time battle) or turn-based. Each word has a timer and costs souls (a currency I’ll get to later) and your and the enemies’ health bars are based on the amount of letters in their name.
As the game progresses some enemies hit harder, some have shields that block words containing the letters adorned and some may only be damaged by certain effects.
The combat due to its real-time nature feels like a more visceral version of the dice rolling mechanics many CYOA books had. It’s simple enough but there are tactics, and, in some parts, you may feel like avoiding combat is your best choice.

Unfortunately I can see the combat being something that may feel too simplistic for some. I believe there are so many distractions that it never needed to be too in-depth but did feel a little disappointed towards the end where it didn’t feel like there was enough variety and that things could have at least scaled faster.
A problem I had by the end as I went back in to find more secrets and collect some Steam Trophies (because I still wanted more) was discovering quite how many words each of the four main characters could unlock.
To put it simply, I finished the game on row two or three for each and it turned out there were seven rows of words I could have collected.
It was nice to know I didn’t have to grind out these actions to see the credits but it also made it feel to me that the amount there was, was not really necessary.
I also found that the few times I did feel the difficulty had spiked, that having to learn the lore based words before eventually seeing one that could affect combat did feel like a chore.
Discovering the memories of your party is definitely a cool and interesting way to serve the player lore but I felt throughout that maybe these should have been separated which would have made the combat scale faster and potentially be more engaging.

Before even seeing Cryptmaster being played, I was intrigued by its art direction.
To me, and then confirmed through tweets, AMA’s and the like, the art reflects older fantasy books and specifically another text-based non-video game format, that being choose your own adventure books and another British classic in Fighting Fantasy.
The environments may be 3D but they look as if they are drawn with ink, gloomy, scratchy and full detail.
If there were one small criticism to make about the game’s looks it’s that although there are multiple locations the black and white dungeons still look a little too similar, but it’s a direction with a purpose and one I feel that if they did push for more variety would maybe have lost the game’s specific feel and fashion.

The characters all look fantastic, rats, knights, blobs and more, all as you’d expect and all feeling like they were pulled straight from the page of an old Warhammer book.
The only thing that sometimes doesn’t look right is when bumping into an enemy at an odd angle. It was never game-breaking but did sometimes look awkward when they’d shuffle into the camera and have to turn around - the sort of “glitch” that I wouldn’t actually want removed but a very minor argument for a teeny bit more polish.
One of the top points in why this game is worth anyone’s time is that the voice acting is top tier and is genuinely funny throughout and as an extra bonus, Treguard from Knightmare, the same actor is in it as a narrator.
There are many games that attempt comedy and for me, the majority fail, but between the silliness of the riddles, finding items and the great characters I was doing small chuckles from beginning right up to the end.

Finally I want to just speak on the “souls” currency I mentioned earlier.
As I said each word you say in combat costs souls, one per letter, and these are acquired not just from winning fights but from collecting bugs (typing their names when you see them on walls), fishing and the in universe card game WHATEVER.
WHATEVER isn’t particularly my favourite in universe card-game but much like Triple Triad, Gwent and the like it is an enjoyable distraction that runs parallel to the main quest without hindering your progress.
I wanted to give some focus to the souls because I found it a clever combination of currency and MP, action points or whatever you prefer. Too many games want you to juggle and remember so many different types and Cryptmaster keeps it all about letters.
Grab letters, use letters, spend them as money. It’s a small innovation that doesn’t change the world but one I’ve not seen enough people speak about.

In the end, Cryptmaster was love at first sight and a game that I felt like only I’d want, something that combines Knightmare, Atmosfear (coincidentally also known as Nightmare) and Fighting Fantasy, not only exists but completely delivers.
It looks good, sounds good, is funny and plays well. Sure there are a couple of minor balance things I would like to be different but nothing that ever had me close down steam.
It never outstayed its welcome, so much so I went straight back in to delve deeper into some of the games more cryptic puzzles, and by the end it had cemented itself not only as a confirmed good time but one I would happily recommend even to those who aren’t quite a nerdy child of the 80’s like me - although if you are, Hoo boy, get this!

A couple of days removed from finishing this game I thought to myself about what made me love it so much but why I didn’t see it as perfect, this game made me not only reflect on my time with it but the entire JRPG genre.
Before I continue I realise by definition the J in JRPG is used incorrectly here, Sabotage are Canadian as far as I am aware, but either side of the argument on whether JRPG is a reductive term that you sit on you know what I am referring to. This title is a giant love letter and homage to the SNES classics that really put that style of game on the map and to save name dropping a dozen different games JRPG will be a term that is used throughout.

A somewhat obvious statement to make is that there are factors of this game that I like a lot that some people experiencing it will find either no fault in at all or believe they are large issues.
As I spent time thinking about these factors, the things that commonly may annoy folk and the JRPG genre itself, the main word that came to my mind was ‘Pacing’.

First of all I will state that Sea of Stars never outstayed its welcome and these days having any sort of RPG be completed (not rushed) within 30+ hours is a welcome surprise.
The start of Sea of Stars with its throws you in and then suddenly stop you to explain origins set up may feel violent in how fast it tugs you back but I felt the game using the classic of mechanic introductions via training stories worked well here as it does a good job of building the characters, their world and their purpose even if a lot of it is somewhat cliché. It does drop teases towards the future of the plot and whilst I would say most twists were either too obvious or telegraphed when you’re making homages to so many classics it’s hard to not make some of that slightly predictable.

Good pacing doesn’t mean fast but does mean that the audience or player in this case is excited about the moment and looking forward to the next, and hopefully not begging for it to come out of boredom.
Games can do this by introducing new mechanics, JRPGs can suffer as due to their average length they may not be able to introduce as many “per minute” as other titles because simply that could become too overwhelming and really there are only so many ideas that can work well together within one game.
The other issue is that mechanical pacing isn’t the only thing that needs to be good to keep a player engaged in a larger RPG tale but also the story itself.
I could probably write a completely separate piece about that, but much like a film and exactly as with mechanics the audience needs to be kept engaged and in games this can be down to how often big story beats take center-stage, how long they keep you out of playing etc.

To put it simply, developing games is hard and I would say getting the balance of pacing right in any JRPG is actually somewhat of a miracle.

The point I’m trying to land on with this far too wide and deep rabbit hole is, I believe Sea of Stars gets it so very close to perfect but my close is not the same as yours or everyone else’s and I think it matters a lot.

Mechanics wise the game is arguably quite front loaded, Valere and Zale the dual protagonists of this story learn combat and their main slew of skills at the very start.
Once they learn to “use magic without using magic” the future abilities they gain for the turn-based combat is down to the companions they meet along the way and what ‘Combo’ abilities they can use with them.
Now there are plenty of different combinations of line-up you can make during the game and the enemies are quite varied meaning the combat does evolve and change as you learn against them.
One of Sea of Stars main positives is that it makes turn-based combat as engaging as it can, with techniques seen in other titles timed button presses on attacks and blocks can help as well as abilities and combos sometimes implementing things like rallies or controlling directions of an attack.
The other mechanic is what the game calls “locks”. Each enemy always has a countdown timer before they make their attack but sometimes next to this clock will appear a set of panels with symbols denoting slash or blunt attacks and the game’s mix of elements.
Your aim is to use those types of attack the enemy’s lock is showing and break it so they do not get to do whatever special ability they had planned, even if you don’t manage to break the lock completely in time if it was building to a big attack and you got for example four out of five broken the attack will deal your team less damage than if you didn’t bother.
The lock system is great because it causes tension, it makes you wonder “can I get that done in time?” you have to stop and plan your moves, sometimes you know you can’t so how are you going to prepare to take this potential big hit? It makes combat not just tactical but almost a puzzle and because it’s always in your interest to solve these it makes you engage with all of the different attacks and abilities you have at your disposal rather than just rely on clicking the same thing in every fight.
Now this system is why I think the game front loads mechanics because you wouldn’t want Zale and Valere with twenty different abilities each by the end, that would either be confusing or make any lock combination irrelevant.
It also means that depth can be added as characters join, new elements are discovered and enemies potentially become tougher.
You’ll start by thinking a lock with four panels is tough and be facing bosses with ten, the ‘Combo’ abilities you learn which are co-op attacks gained from building a gauge will make these possible but again you will need to plan and learn.

Overall I love Sea of Star’s combat. I think it’s one of the better turn-based combat systems I have played and the only issue I ever really found was it did mean fighting jobbers in earlier areas took a little longer than you’d like even though they were no real threat.

Sea of Stars isn’t just turn-based combat however, outside of towns where typically plot progresses and items are bought and sold, the areas where the battles take place are not just corridors. Areas ranging from dungeons, to forests, to mountain climbs all involve traversal that can find you solving (fairly simple) puzzles, using equipment you gain and much more like a good Zelda dungeon might.
Outside of all these areas is also a beautiful map that isn’t as vast as you may expect but traveling that will be a similar experience to many past JRPGs that use a world map - if with a few unique twists on the way.


If I were to argue the combat may have been front loaded I would say that the story was the opposite.
Now thankfully I do not mean to imply that in the last part of the game you get huge lore dumps but the plot doesn’t get truly exciting until what for me felt like the final third.
I will not go into specifics because I am not here to spoil the game but the start of the game feels extremely trite and a lot of the adventures you go throughout the game are based on a MacGuffin that will be at the end of the next dungeon you’re entering.
It does keep everyone of these a different length but whilst I may never have felt bored due to this design choice I didn’t find myself as excited as I would do towards the end.

One of the issues I have is one that really does involve taste and it’s the writing.
Overall it feels modern, snappy, and never long-winded. However in the same breath it also aims to be funny and for me I found a lot would land and then become annoying.
A podcast I listen to described some characters as “speaking just a minute too long” and this is a perfect description especially of a group of pirates you meet early in your journey - one of which is attempting to be meta and that can quickly become grating.
As an aside (what are my reviews if not a series of tangents?) I am currently playing Sabotage’s previous game “The Messenger” because I enjoyed this so much and the comedy is very much the same there so if you’ve already played that game you know what to expect.
In the end I would say the plot was good, just not great and one that bar a couple of twists I will probably forget down the line.

This review has fallen into the 90’s magazine classic of breaking down and scoring each element of the game. I would love to say this was on purpose, I’m trying to be nostalgic, this is an homage but that would be a lie. However if we’ve done Gameplay and Story let’s finish with Graphics and Sound.

Sea of Stars is a beautiful looking game, not really 16 bit but gives those feels with its incredible pixel art. Like many great remakes do, it looks how you remember games looked.
A lot of what works for it are things such as modern lighting, these can bring things to life in ways they may not have on the SNES and also add a simple layer of magic to the more exciting attacks.
The music has some great highs thanks to getting the legendary Yasunori Mitsuda on for a few tracks.
Sadly for me personally the music never fails to be good but I rarely found it great. Many tracks did grow on me over time and I suspect out of all the things I went in with too high an expectation of was the OST because for me some of the strongest pieces of music ever come from JRPGs and not just the older ones.

Sea of Stars is very good and just occasionally touches greatness with the tips of its fingers.
It is easily one of the best modern homages to the 16-bit era JRPG and it manages to be retro while also still feeling modern. Its story and mechanics are not the deepest you will encounter but this for me is easily as much of a strength as it can be a weakness.
I never once felt lost in the twisting plot points or jargon but immersed enough that twists could surprise. The game never felt too hard that I felt a need to grind but there were boss battles that kept me engaged more than many others of the past have.

In the end it could be argued that Sea of Stars, even with all its nostalgia, isn't made for people who played what it is riffing off but actually for a new audience that never got to experience those games and deserve a taste, and I think that if that was the mission it delivers on it in spades.

I finished this game... I finished this game?

Honestly, I've no idea why I played all 35+ hours of it. I was, at best, having an alright time. I enjoyed Sabotage's previous game The Messenger, though soured on it when I realised it contained a big tribute to Jordan fucking Peterson.

Thankfully, the fev has clarified that they don't actually agree with Jordan Peterson which was genuinely quite a relief.


Anyway, right, look. Big big fan of a dev making their own universe and setting all their games within it. Love that shit. Areas, characters, and music from The Messenger appear in Sea Of Stars, which acts as a prequel of sorts. But also, if you didn't know that, you wouldn't ever learn it apart from me telling you, so there you go.

So yeah, maybe my bar of what I enjoy from a turn based RPG has been lifted too high by Persona 5, but I'm fine that I spent all my time playing this, but wouldn't necessarily tell you to rush out and play it now. A learning experience for all.

SPOILERS when the ninja woman takes her mask off and looks like that for the rest of the game it kept constantly giving me the creeps ok cheers

I cannae believe so many folk are treating such an ok game as some big line in the culture war sand. If they took a few minutes away from signing petitions and replying to every Sony tweet with their hashtag, and actually bought the thing they'd see that no amount of skin can save this from being just very fine.

Flat shallow characters, messy predictable story, repetitive combat. This game has it all!

Fights are mostly just waiting for the enemy to do something so you can parry it and do a burst attack. There are combos, but you almost never get to do full ones because the enemy is starting its next swing and your only options are block, parry, or dodge. Good luck with that last one, because the dodge is dogshit. It's supposed to be for moving away from unblockable attacks, but the timing for it just feels off. This is made painfully worse when more than one enemy is targeting you, and your Souls instincts kick in looking for i-frames that aren't there.

Boss fights and music mostly rip though, so it has that going for it.

The characters however are like interacting with cardboard. Everyone is so basic. They're saying words that sound important, but there's so little there beneath it in both the acting or body language. Adam has to be the worst of these. The man feels like a placeholder model and voice through the whole game. It's wild that's he's one of the main cast. They're all desperately trying to get you to care about a story that feels vague, but by accident. Not some kind of "Oh the secrets are being kept from you" thing, but like they forgot to give us necessary info because they know it all since they're the ones making the game. I burst out laughing at the end when some daft stuff happens and a character just goes "What are you talking about?" as this person walks away without saying anything. It's exactly how I felt in the moment.

I'm convinced this whole thing could have worked better as more of a boss rush with bits of story or travel in-between à la Furi. I didn't feel like I was connecting wih the people or what was going on when I was trekking across empty desert doing fetch quests where every one ends with finding a corpse with an attached dying message. It's a poor man's Nier Automata, and that doesn't do it any favours in a world where I've come to resent a game I loved because it's done cross-overs with fucking everything and I'm sick of seeing 2B. THEY MADE ME SICK OF SEEING A NICE BIG ARSE!

A great little time with a silly, mucky dog.

Spent less than an hour to see the credits but I'm going to go back and get the badges because it's just nice.

It's simple fun, controlling a Pomeranian wondering around a new house trying to make the most mess you can spreading muck and interacting with a whole host of things to make your mark.

A simple game, but so much so that I hadn't changed the language to English and had no problems with it.
I was tempted to say I did this to further immerse myself as a dog, getting the gist of basic commands but not understanding language.

Free and fun for all the family... or something.

I just can't anymore. I uninstalled and reinstalled this game three times before I finally pulled the plug.

Incredibly frustrating, awful dialogue and acting, rotten characters, very linear design, instant fail nonsense if you don't do things EXACTLY the way the developers want you to, blah blah blah.

It's such a VIDEOGAME videogame. Go here, press this button, interact with this shiny thing, press that button, go there. I haven't played a game that wound me up like this in a while. Unbelievably annoying.

Reading over my review of FFXVI before I posted this, I realized that this is by far my longest review I've written and probably ever will write (ended up being exactly 2500 words when the most I've done before is a little more than 1000) so if you're not interested in reading that, I'll sum things up with one sentence. Final Fantasy XVI had the potential to be great, but it just ended up being boring.

Final Fantasy XVI is a perfectly serviceable video game. It doesn’t feel like it was hampered by external pressures, a tight development schedule, or constant rewrites and redesigns like the mess that was FFXV was. It doesn’t suffer from any game breaking bugs, egregious performance issues, or any of the other problems that most modern AAA titles release with. It feels like a (mostly) complete product that was what the development team wanted to make. They wanted to make a “dark” Final Fantasy game that’s heavily inspired by western dark fantasy with flashy action combat. The problem is that the game they wanted to make is, as a whole, incredibly dull. I’m not the kind of person to normally whine about the casualization of video games, but FFXVI’s core gameplay is so unbelievably basic when compared not just to the character action games it’s trying to emulate, but also to Square’s own catalog of action RPGS that it feels like a clear attempt to dumb things down for a larger audience. In the last five years, Square Enix has released Trials of Mana, NEO The World Ends with You, NieR Replicant ver. 1.22, two different Star Ocean games, both Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth, Stranger of Paradise, Harvestella, and Valkyrie Elysium. Dragon Quest Builders 2 as well if you want to count that as an action RPG. Go just a little further back and you have to add NieR Automata, The World Ends with You Final Remix, and Kingdom Hearts III + ReMind to that list. I have not played Valkyrie Elysium or Second Story R myself, but I have played all of the other games I listed for at least a few hours and every single one of them has a better combat system and at least a slightly more interesting plot than FFXVI. If the game was made by a different studio and pushed out as a new single player epic exclusively for the Sony Slopbox 5, then I’d probably look at it a bit more favorably when having to compare it more to games like Horizon or God of War than to NieR and TWEWY. That’s not the case, though. This is a flagship product from Square Enix. Square. Fucking. Enix. One of, if not the biggest names in RPGs and Japanese games as a whole spent years on this game and developed it alongside some absolutely fantastic titles, but somehow it ended up being overshadowed by their own back catalog and paling in comparison to its more direct inspirations.

On paper, FFXVI sounds rad as hell. You play as a guy who can turn into a giant fire monster in order to fight other people who turn into giant elemental beasts, swap between a bunch of different elemental powers, and even has a dog companion. You fight alongside characters like your childhood friend who wields both a rapier and the power of ice, a charming outlaw who smokes and can call down lightning at will, and several other less colorful companions. You’ll travel the world and destroy the very foundations of society in order to save mankind as a whole, all while fighting against an unjust system and freeing magic users who are seen as little more than monstrous tools by their own families. It’ll be a flashy action game with things like air juggling, perfect dodges and parries, and even a stagger system for larger enemies. The game definitely has potential, but it just doesn’t live up to that. Moreso on the gameplay side than the story side, so I’ll start by getting my story complaints out of the way first.

Starting with the characters, I actually like Clive as a protagonist. Yeah he’s kind of a standard brooding JRPG protagonist, but he has enough personality to keep things interesting and isn’t quite as aloof as someone like Squall or as generally disinterested as Noctis. Jill has a few decent moments, but just stands around or fights alongside Clive for most of the game. For being the main heroine, she has way less of an impact on the story than characters like Aerith, Rinoa, Yuna, and Garnet. Cid is great, though. I’m always a fan of that kind of dashing rogue character, but Cid steals the show whenever he’s around. Not only is he the driving force for almost all of the game’s first act, but his animation and voice just nail the whole devil-may-care persona he’s developed for himself while still making him come across as serious when he needs to be. Hugo Kupka is an asshole, but that makes for an effective villain so I didn’t mind it. Some of the side characters, especially the ones that populate the hideaway, are rather likeable, too. Everyone else just kind of sucks. Joshua is little more than a plot device for most of the game, serving to show up and either save Clive or dump lore on what the fuck Ultima is. Ultima himself is a pretty bland main villain, and even his mortal agents like the whole Waloed gang or Olivier are just boring. Anabella’s one-dimensional obsession with power and noble bloodlines is kind of funny, at least. The main plot itself also isn’t that bad, but it feels like the different arcs of the game (Finding the second Eikon of Fire, trying to save bearers, taking over as Cid and destroying the mothercrystals, Primogenesis, and finally the final showdown with Barnabas and Ultima) are kind of disconnected, especially everything that happened before the second timeskip. Clive pretty quickly just starts acting like he’s fine with having destroyed Phoenix Gate, killed hundreds of his own countrymen, and effectively having caused the downfall of Rosaria. As soon as Cid starts talking about how the mothercrystals are draining the aether from the world, any developments regarding the plight of the bearers is sidelined and shoehorned into side quests that are scattered throughout the game and then thrown in your face right before the ending. The same goes for most side plots such as the aether flood in Lostwing or Blackthorne’s whole character arc. Yeah they handwave this as needing to save the world itself before saving the people in it, but that’s a pretty bad excuse for dropping an entire core theme of your game in favor of leaning back on a somewhat standard FF elemental crystals and otherworldly evil plot. A lot of the Eikon fights also feel kind of shoehorned in, which is weird considering how heavily they were advertised. It’s almost like the fights were thought up first and the story was made as way to justify moving the player between them. Overall I thought it was fine, but a pretty average story overall. For a series that’s fondly remembered for its storytelling (I don’t think most FF stories are all that great, but they’re definitely a big reason as to why the series is as popular as it is) , that’s a pretty big failure.

If the gameplay was great, then it could make up for a kind of dull story, but sadly it isn’t. Clive is limited to a single sword combo, a few special attacks (a stinger, a charged attack, an air combo, and the ability to press triangle to shoot an incredibly weak magic shot at the enemy or to add little magic flourishes to your normal sword combo), using the d-pad to make Torgal attack an enemy, and his Eikonic abilities. He also gets a limit break which basically functions like a DT/transformation in other action games that changes your combo into an unintelligible mess of swirling sword strikes without making it feel that much stronger. You can equip up to three of these at once, and outside of changing the element of your magic (this never seems to matter but maybe there are a few enemies with actual weaknesses), they give you access to different special attacks on a cooldown timer and a different ability mapped to O. These range from basic things like Titan’s block/parry or Phoenix’s pseudo-teleport dash to some things that are actually kind of neat like Bahamut’s Megaflare that’s charged up by dodging attacks while stuck in a mostly-defenseless charge mode or how using Odin’s ability completely changes Clive’s combo (every Eikon should have done this IMO). You can also equip up to two special attacks on each Eikon, and even mix and match them once they’re mastered. They can kind of change the way you play, but the combat’s core flow never changes. For small enemies, you just wail on them with your basic combo and Eikonic abilities, and with big enemies you just chip away at their stagger bar until they get knocked down, then you cycle through all of your abilities on cooldown for the damage multiplier. There are no branching combo paths, no changes to Clive’s basic move set with different eikons, or even different weapon types, and there are really only three kinds of Eikonic abilities: ones that are attacks, ones that are counters, and ones that add a passive source of damage. Yeah things like Rising Flames and Upheaval may seem different, but the only reason you’ll ever choose one over the other is because one is on cooldown. Since the overwhelming majority of your damage comes from the stagger window where you can build up a damage multiplier, the fastest way to beat an enemy is to stagger it and then just use all of your Eikonic abilities in order, assuming they aren’t on cooldown. This becomes even more apparent if you decide to use the “ultimate” abilities for each Eikon like Flames of Rebirth or Gigaflare that have significantly longer cooldowns than the normal abilities. Because of these things, every encounter plays out exactly the same, regardless of what enemy you’re fighting. You can’t even really mess around with different moves or try to fight more stylishly. The only real change between normal fights and boss fights is that bosses have some QTEs scattered between them and get interrupted by cutscenes three or four times per fight. I have no problem with the skill floor being low in a game like this, but when every single fight is so similar and the skill ceiling is just about as low as the floor is, it makes for a boring experience. Eikon battles are a little more interesting since Ifrit actually has different combo finishers depending on how far into the base combo you are when you press triangle, but that mostly begs the question of why Clive couldn’t also have more than one way to end a combo. The combat would have been tolerable in a 10-15 hour game, but since a playthrough of XVI can take well over 60 hours if you decide to do most of the lackluster side content like I did, it’s nowhere near deep enough. Since there are also only the absolute basics of an RPG system underlying it, there’s not much of a wider reason to fight enemies other than because you find it fun.

One Eikon fight comes close to redeeming this game, however. A little after the halfway point, Clive fights Hugo Kupka, Titan’s Dominant. Kupka has been on a five-year long crusade against Clive since Clive killed his manipulative lover/one true love Benedikta Harman. Clive wins the first fight by cutting off Hugo’s hands, only to be interrupted by soldiers from the kingdom of Waloed before he can finish the job. They take Kupka back to his home and give him a pair of iron hands. This is an excuse to stretch out the Kupka arc of the game, move the actual fight with Titan from Rosalith to the middle of nowhere in Dhalmekia, and to have a scene where Kupka struggles to eat with his hands and throws a temper tantrum while yelling fuck. When Clive finally arrives, he finds Kupka having a schizophrenic episode where the naked ghost of Benedikta is convincing him to use the power of the mothercrystal to finally kill Clive. A pretty standard fight between Titan and Ifrit ensues, but when Ifrit is about to win, Titan finds and promptly eats the magical crack rock that is the heart of the mothercrystal. Turning into a giant tentacled monstrosity, Titan erupts from the earth and this theme starts playing.
https://youtu.be/7L_6atLQouc?si=g40adyLy3WVG776G
It is important to note that almost every track in the game up this point has been pretty standard fantasy fare (a few songs like the hideaway themes are actually quite nice but most of it is kind of forgettable, especially compared to other FF soundtracks). A fight ensues between Ifrit and the newly born Titan Lost that involves Ifrit running up the tentacles like a Sonic the Hedgehog boss fight, ripping one of them off, and plunging it into Titan Lost from above while yelling “Heads up, Hugo” The fight continues with Hugo now back in his normal Titan form and Clive/Ifrit using the power of the magical crack rock to create a pair of giant hands that he uses for a grand total of one attack. It’s pure chuuni nonsense, and it’s great. The fight isn’t particularly good, but the spectacle and sheer stupidity of it all makes it an absolute joy to play through. The fight with Bahamut comes close, as Clive and Joshua end up fusing to make a super Eikon of Fire that’s just Ifrit with some more spikes and some feathers coming off of him, then they chase Bahamut into space and stop it from using Zettaflare (made famous by Donald Duck during his heroic act of self-sacrifice in Kingdom Hearts III) and destroying the planet.

FFXVI could have benefited so much from having more of that stupidity in it, or otherwise embracing the goofier side of the series. It alco could have just been more fun to play, but considering this was made by the director of an MMO I don’t think that was ever really on the table. As it is now, the game is mostly just dull, and the story isn’t nearly good enough to make it worth sitting through. It’s much more competently made than the absolute mess that was FFXV, but that’s a particularly low bar to pass. It’s not comically shitty, but that also means it’s not the kind of trainwreck that’s interesting to play through. I feel like I SHOULD give this a 2.5/5 just to be consistent since I gave XV a 2 and XVI is definitely a better game, but I think I actually enjoy XV more than this despite its laundry list of flaws so they get the same score. There are other things like how the game makes you hold R2 to open a bunch of doors or how Clive is never shown to use any abilities other than Ifrit’s/Phoenix’s outside of gameplay until the final boss, or how the Ultima Prime fight is just a cutscene with some QTEs thrown in that I could say, but I feel like I’ve complained enough to get my point across.

I do really like how you hear Torgal from the speaker on the Dualsense whenever you pet him, though.

This title is a masterclass in the subgenre of puzzle-platformers that many indie games live in. The place where it isn’t just about going left to right and solving puzzles, but where it’s all about emotions, feelings, beautiful art, music and essentially just vibes.

Your character, never given a name during your time playing is an unknown red coat and hat wearing person who at first you are simply just moving from left to right with.
You learn, or more so confirm, movement is with the stick, you have a little jump and a button to pick items up. Interacting is simply done by picking up and placing objects or physically pushing your character into buttons or movable objects.
That’s it, except, you can zoom in and out.
A simple addition to a set of simple controls that enables you to feel the scale of what the protagonist is coming across, the vastness of the journey you are heading on and also the fine details and information that maybe can be taken from the world at their level.

Outside of some seagulls and other animals you move by, you are all alone in this world, heading forwards for honestly, an unknown reason. Freedom, back to someone, it is always never completely clear and still you feel things for this character as this journey continues.

I say that you as the protagonist are alone, but truthfully this isn’t quite the case as I see it.
Very early on through some basic puzzle solving you discover what is this game’s main thing: The Okomotive.
To describe the Okomotive as simply a vehicle almost feels reductive. True, it is a tool for your character to travel from A to B, to head towards the unknown in the right direction but over time it feels like so much more.
It feels almost like a companion, you take care of it as you must fuel it, stop fires and fix any potential mishaps.
Along your journey you find new ways to upgrade the Okomotive and each of these feels more fulfilling and more like a real gift than upgrades do in most other games.

I can only imagine the bond you feel with this big wheeled, trash eating, sail using car thing is what it is like to own and love a Classic or Vintage vehicle.
To say that before I even played this myself, watching @nightmaremodego stream this I got emotional about a car, feels wild but this game manages to do this.
The rollercoaster is not just the physical ride it takes but the emotions this game manages to surface along the way.

The art in FAR is beautiful, painterly, fascinating to absorb the worlds as you pass them and the weather changes.
The music is incredible and puts in so much work, you can feel excited, frightened, calm, proud - for such a short journey it would be a crime to explain each or any of these highs but they are there.

Earlier in the year I played a game that was much more of a “limbo clone” and it too had wonderful music and great art but it didn’t have as much soul as FAR, for it couldn’t hold a candle to what this game does. In that review I used words such as cute, nice and slow.
Those could apply to FAR but don’t cover it, instead majestic, fascinating and gentle are what come to mind.
In other version of this type of game I can find myself becoming bored, feeling that it is time for the next thing, in FAR I only ever felt this way when I would leave the Okomotive to find fuel far away and the only criticism I have is really grasping and that is I would like maybe one or two more bits to pick up easier - that’s it.

My advice, whenever you may be reading this, grab this game for the pennies it costs to get now. Stick your headphones in, shut out the rest of the world and play this through, even potentially in one sitting.
I am not expecting you to cry, but if you do play this and do not feel anything I would be shocked.

I waited a wee while after finishing to see how I felt days later. Can still see myself taking a half star off somewhere down the line.

The best conclusion I can come to is that yes it's very nice and shiny, but I hate that the rules seem to have gone. It feels like a toolset has been removed. RE4's combat had rules to it. You knew how to manipulate the crowd. Kiting enemies together then using a well placed shot to get a stun and roundhouse the lot of them. A leg shot on the running dude would put him on the ground and buy time to take out the stronger enemy coming at his back, or even let you go to town on him with the knife as he stands up to save ammo. You figured out the rules, and used them to your advantage. But now all those interactions feel like pure luck the game occasionally deigns to let you have. It feels like a consequence of chasing the realism that modern Resi goes for. They don't want recognisable patterns from photorealistic enemies. There need to be subtle movements and stuff that feel natural or the illusion breaks down. The arcadeyness is gone in favour of a fucking chicken being able to stun Leon long enough to let Ganados get a command grab on him. I'm just rambling here. But this all feels very clear coming off a replay of the original the day before release.

In their brilliant review, RexZakel said: "Ultimately, a big realization I made about RE4 Remake compared to the original is that it’s a game where things simply happen to you, rather than a game where you can make things happen."

Nail on the head.

I'm left wondering if some of the patter I've seen surrounding this is from folk who actually finished the game, or are just doing that internet thing of parroting what someone they like said about it.

Seen some visceral reactions to its poor handling of the subject, but I never felt anything other than bored of it all. I think the way I had heard the game discussed meant I was waiting for some truly wild transgressive shit that just isnae really there for me. But then none of it applies to my life so I can only speak from this position.

Never did I get the impression that they were saying trauma cannot be overcome and so you must die. I do think there is space for stories that touch upon the very real fact that some people can never get through a horrible thing that happened to them. There are endless cases of it that many of us will be far too familiar with, but Blooby Squad are absolutely not the folk to be doing it.