It's very rare for a game to make me feel empty after playing it; like I'll never be able to recreate that first time playing through the game, and desperately crave something similar that fills that void. However, that feeling usually manifests whenever a game's story deeply impacts me on an emotional or psychological level; Chrono Trigger is the first time I've been craving something that not only tells a story similar to it, but plays and feels just like it, too. Chrono Trigger is such an impeccably crafted game on every possible level and by every conceivable metric, that the only real cure to this feeling I have is, simply, playing Chrono Trigger again, even though I beat it for the first time not too long ago. But I can't do that and have the same experience I had playing it blind; it just won't be the same.

As someone who was born in the early 2000s and grew up in an Apple family, and thus, never had a PC, I didn't really get the chance to play a lot of the games older than I am until very recently, be it through remakes, remasters, or emulation. So, as of late, I've been playing through a lot of critically acclaimed RPGs from before my time, and I've been really enjoying my deep dive through JRPG history. When I reviewed Final Fantasy VI, I opened with the line "90s RPGs are just built different;" while that line was just a joke to summarize my feelings on FF6, as well as other 90s RPGs, like Live A Live, Super Mario RPG, and Fire Emblems Genealogy of the Holy War and Thracia 776, I wholeheartedly believe that cute little joke as truth with Chrono Trigger. Chrono Trigger is, indisputably and insurmountably, built different; different than even the contemporaries of its time. Despite being nearly 30 years old, the game feels like it hasn't aged even a single day; something I can't say about even RPGs from as recently as the last couple years. Chrono Trigger aged finer than even the world's finest Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. Ironically for a game that is literally about time travel, or perhaps very fittingly, Chrono Trigger is a timeless masterpiece of a game.

One of Chrono Trigger's many greatest strengths is in its straightforwardness. Compared to the contemporaries of its genre, Chrono Trigger is refreshingly simple in every possible aspect, and is all the better for it, playing on its own simplicity in the most expertly crafted ways to have not just dedicated fans of the genre, but anyone, to be able to just pick up the game and play. The game’s combat system is already very familiar to veterans of the genre due to its similarities to the Final Fantasy games of yore, but, luckily for newcomers, they won’t have a hard time learning the ropes at all. Players will quickly catch on that Techs are the way to go in combat, quickly ending the game’s normal encounters with just a couple uses, if that, and that action timing can matter quite a bit, especially in boss fights. Once the player has gotten familiar enough with the flow of combat, and might even start to feel burnt out, the game starts to introduce ideas and enemy mechanics to shake things up; which, conveniently, is often when traveling to another era. The earliest example of this in motion is shortly after the player unlocks the ability to use magic. After this point, certain enemies begin to appear that take greatly reduced damage until the player uses a certain type of magic against them, such as the hammer-wielding Goblins in the Middle Ages and all types of Dinosaurs in Prehistory. It sounds like a no-brainer on paper when described, since this is just basic RPG design; however, having the gameplay concepts described to you isn’t the same as actually playing it for yourself, because the way Chrono Trigger so effortlessly and seamlessly introduces the player to these concepts at such perfect times is a magical feeling in action. The game feels like it grows in complexity exactly as the player’s knowledge of the game’s mechanics and inner workings grows with it, never plateauing for even a moment until the final act, where a game’s mechanical depth should ideally already be at its maximum. The game is fairly easy all the way through as a result, but that’s honestly a good thing; not every game needs to crush your balls at every possible moment, whether you have them or not. The craziest part, one that I haven’t even mentioned yet, is that despite its general lack of difficulty, the game doesn’t handhold you at all, because Chrono Trigger trusts the player’s intelligence. It doesn’t just expect you to figure out what to do, it knows you’ll figure out what to do, and is confident in that fact. I’m not gonna mince words at all here: in spite of its simplicity in practice, Chrono Trigger’s combat is so well thought-out that it ruins nearly every other JRPG combat system for me, and this game is ALMOST THIRTY YEARS OLD. A thirty-year-old game is inducing these feelings into me. That is insane.

This line of thinking also applies to the main story of the game. JRPGs from around this time are known nowadays for being extremely cryptic with their objectives, almost to an annoying degree. That was one of my biggest difficulties in completing Final Fantasy VI; especially in the game’s second half; and is the main reason why I haven’t completed EarthBound yet. This often forces players to have to refer to a walkthrough to know what to do, because they just expect that the player will know exactly what to do at any given time, and having to flip over to a walkthrough over and over can take a lot of the fun out of following the story for yourself. You can probably tell where this train of thought is going. Chrono Trigger, in classic Chrono Trigger fashion, decided to be smart, and streamline the experience so that each plot beat flows seamlessly from one point to the next, letting the player determine how to proceed at their own accord. Despite the daunting task of having so many different settings available at once because of the player’s ability to time travel, the game’s story guides the player through the story’s events through hinting at certain things the player would need to do to progress, without directly telling them or handholding them. Once again, Chrono Trigger trusts the player’s intelligence to figure out the puzzle laid out for them for themselves. One example of this in action is around halfway through the game: when the party recovers the Masamune in the depths of the Denadoro Mountains in the Middle Ages, the sword is broken, so they’re suggested to take it to the weaponsmith Melchior back in the Present Day. Melchior tells them that he can’t repair it due to the material it’s made from being lost to time, not having been found for millenia at that point. So, what are they to do? If they can’t repair the Masamune, they’re hopeless in taking on Magus, and in turn, stopping him from summoning Lavos. It’s hopeless…or is it? Well, there’s a thread that the player can tug on in their search to track down the stone. If they paid attention to the time rifts in The End of Time, they would have noticed the rift that takes them to 65,000,000 BC that’s been there since The End of Time was unlocked; there hadn’t been a reason to go there yet, so the player likely wouldn’t have if they were following the story. Now, due to the hint that Melchior indirectly gave them about the stone’s whereabouts, they have reason to jump into that rift: to seek out the stone and repair the Masamune. Sequences exactly like this are littered all throughout the game, and it feels super rewarding to follow everything and figure it out for yourself (even if I just spoiled one of those sequences for you). It’s not just the story itself that makes Chrono Trigger so magical; it’s also the way the story is presented, how it’s all laid out, and the experience of moving through it.

There’s one more thing I want to touch in regards to the narrative, and that’s the aforementioned Lavos, the game’s overarching antagonist and final boss. Lavos is an oddly refreshing main antagonist for a JRPG, and it’s for a reason one might not expect. JRPG antagonists are often villains with tragic backstories that led them to pursue a path of hatred and violence, or are comically evil for the sake of having someone satisfying to take down, or are a foil to the main character and the ideology the main character represents. Lavos, on the other hand, is none of those things. Lavos is just…there. It’s a seemingly immortal alien entity that crashed into the Earth in the Prehistory era, and that’s it. Lavos isn’t some evil god that JRPGs are known for having as their final bosses; it's not the monolith of an evil cult that wants to take over the world; it’s just a giant alien, that happens to cause the apocalypse. And that’s exactly what I love about it. Lavos just existing, and us knowing about Lavos from the two hours of the game onward, gives us a solid overarching motivation that carries us through the whole game, building up slowly until we finally confront Lavos to stop the end of the world. And, boy howdy, does that final confrontation feel GOOD.

I’ve been drafting this review for the past week, making sure I get everything I want to say out in the best way I want to say it. Just know, if it wasn’t obvious already, I sincerely wish I could go through this game blind for the first time all over again. Despite its age, Chrono Trigger truly is an experience like no other. I doubt I’ll find anything else like it anytime soon, but perhaps that’s for the best; it means that my time with the game will be even more special as time passes by and I look back at this wonderful game.

I guess 90s RPGs are just built different, I think the RPG boomers are on to something with this one
Of the very few Final Fantasy games I've played, this is undoubtedly one of my new favorites; I can definitely see why the fandom flocks to this one when trying to call FF7 overrated. It just gets so much right. It's got a very engrossing story, an interesting world, charming characters, engaging character progression and party building, super variant party diversity, deep and fun exploration, simple yet effective combat; this game has it all, and it's easy to see why this game gets the sheer love it does.
The two biggest knocks against it are, One: How dated it is; this game definitely feels like a 90s game, complete with extremely cryptic side, and even main, quests that only a walkthrough would know on their first try. Like most other 90s RPGs, it also has a deadly allergy to quality of life features that many modern RPGs have; beyond, of course, the ability to boost resource gain and auto-battle to cut down on grinding, because it's a remaster, and remasters of old RPGs really need that stuff (looking at you, FF10). Two: how braindead easy it is, the entire way through. I never once struggled in this game unless I was actively handicapping myself, and frequently hit the damage cap on most attacks late in the game, despite being deliberately underleveled because of how little I was struggling. While it does cut down a lot on time spent grinding, it comes at the cost of making 90% of the boss fights super anticlimactic because they just die in 5 or so hits; the few that don't are either super frustrating (I hate the Magic Master holy shit), or are, you know, the final boss.

Xenoblade at home

This is the first Tales game I've actually finished, and boy howdy, am I glad I got to play this for "free" through PS Plus, because Arise does not set a good impression of the series, god damn. I would have been even more sour on this had I paid money for it. This game exemplifies and doubles down on everything I don't like about most action JRPGs, along with adding its own clunk and jank that makes the whole game progressively more unfun to play the further it drags on. Couple that with a story that feels like it goes out of its way to be the bluntest, by-the-books rebellion story about racism and slavery being bad (woah, really? i never would have guessed), while also being complete jargony nonsense, both at the same time, and you have a recipe for pure melatonin.

I've found that most action JRPGs tend to fall into what I like to call "The Rhythm" the further they continue. Every single encounter, no matter what enemy or boss you're facing, plays out exactly the same, with you rinsing and repeating the exact same attack pattern ad nauseam until the enemies are down, every single time. Without exception. Final Fantasy XVI, NEO: The World Ends with You, Persona 5 Strikers, Scarlet Nexus, and so on. All of those do this. The feel of the patterns can make a difference between enjoyment and not; Scarlet Nexus, for example, I feel has excellent-feeling and very satisfying combat, even in spite of how repetitive it is. Tales of Arise, on the other hand, I don't like. Like the others, Tales of Arise is no different in following "The Rhythm," except it adds on its own BS to make it even less fun that it already would have been otherwise. For one, this game is grindy as hell, regularly requiring you to farm regular encounters to keep up with the rapidly increasing level of the enemies, as they give proportionally little EXP to compensate. This extremely repetitive process of going in and out of battles with the same enemies, over and over again, made me painfully sick of performing the same motions in each and every battle. There was no sense of progression, it was just the same thing, each and every time. What made it even worse, however, is how constraining the game's economy is. Because enemy encounters, and especially boss fights, tend to drag on for eons at a time, I often found myself running low on the all-too-necessary recovery items, as the ally AI tended to waste all of the party's CP the second they could use a supportive arte. With how little money there is going around, and how expensive items tend to be, I found myself barely scraping by the further the game went on. I skipped out on a lot of the lategame encounters just to save my recovery items and CP, which, in turn, put me even further behind on EXP, making the boss encounters and required encounters that much more difficult to sit through. It's multiple negative feedback loops that coalesce into a giant ouroboros of pain. The only saving grace is that the animations of the finishers are really cool and flashy, I love them. Hearing ASTRAL ENERGY! | SAY NO MORE! over and over never got old.

The story is way too plain, and not even in a fun way, like Fire Emblem Engage or Just Cause 3 or something. It's just plain to the point of being boring and forgettable. How they managed that, I have no idea. There are hints of something more interesting under the surface, like with the major theme of loneliness and how it can affect someone's state of mind and growth as a person; a theme that isn't explored much, if at all, in JRPGs; but all of that is overshadowed by just how bland the rest of the game's story is. This game, and especially its extremely jargony dialogue, is more blunt than a wrecking ball with its themes and message, focuses way too much on the stuff that it really shouldn't have, and overstays its welcome about 10 hours longer than it should have.

This game, like the RE4 remake, Red Dead 2, Hollow Knight, and Dark Souls before it, taught me a very valuable lesson that I really need to start heeding for once in my life: Sometimes, the cool mainstream thing that everyone is raving about won't be for you. Problem is, I can't know until I try. And, boy howdy, did I try with this one.

I've tried getting into this several times, and my god, I just cannot bring myself to enjoy anything about this game. You'd think someone like me, who's normally really into turn-based combat, strategy games, and character-driven stories would really like this (like, in my online friend group, I'm known as the Fire Emblem guy; I've played all of them, for crying out loud), but nope, I bounced off of this game harder than a Taunt targeting a Hatterene. No matter how often all my friends, and their friends, and seemingly everyone else ever, rave about how incredible and fun this game is, I can't see what they're all seeing.

Probably the biggest thing is just how overwhelming this game is to actually grasp. (Just be warned, this part is very rambly.) Combat especially; to understand it, it feels like you either have to be an omnipotent god the moment you boot up the game, or already be deeply familiar with how D&D and/or CRPGs work (of which, I am neither), to be able to get the hang of things in a timely manner. It's gotta have one of the highest skill floors I've ever seen in a game; Either I'm just too stupid for this game (which is probably the most likely one, I'm quite famously a dumbass) or this game is just as bad, if not worse, at explaining its mechanics, than Xenoblade 2 is. As a result, I found myself barely scraping by every combat encounter this game forces you into (of which, it felt like there were a lot in the short time I played, and boy howdy, do they drag), barely escaping with the skin of my teeth, despite having literally every handicap turned on that might help me in combat. This is an instance where I'd actually like to be handheld in a game; that's what handholdy tutorials are for, so dumbasses like me can actually know what they're supposed to be doing and how. It felt like this game just threw me right into the thick of things and expected me to pick up every intricate little detail as quickly as it threw them at me. And I don't like that. I don't want to have to look up and constantly refer back to guides on how to play your game after I've already spent 8 hours in it, because at that point, I'm just reading about how to play the game the way someone smarter than me did, instead of actually learning things for myself and applying that knowledge to my experience. At least with Xenoblade 2, you can get by in the game without knowing the intricacies of the combat system, and still have a fun time; I sure as hell did, or Xenoblade 2 wouldn't be one of my favorite games. In short, please handhold me more, I'm a fucking idiot and don't know how your game works because you didn't tell me, and there's way too much going on for me to be able to learn all of this in a timely manner. The feel of combat is another thing entirely, but that's probably more this game being very clearly designed with mouse and keyboard in mind, and me playing this on a PS5; combat on PS5 is clunk city to attempt to control, especially in tight spaces.

This game prides itself on its astounding freedom of choice, and that every single choice you make will affect something down the road. I don't like that. Not the freedom of choice itself, that's really cool. The problem I have is with just how much your choices matter. I know that's the name of the game, and is exactly what I signed up for, but it spikes my anxiety way too much, and that's something I didn't think would happen when I got the game and heard about that. I'm used to your choices not really mattering much in the grand scheme of things, only affecting some lines of dialogue, or maybe an ending if we're pushing it. Undertale and Chrono Trigger are the only games I've played where it feels like every choice can matter, but even then, it only affects those aforementioned things in the grand scheme of things. With this game, every little thing; every dialogue choice, every combat encounter, every action, every inaction; feels like it matters, and can affect the outcome of even the most minor of events. While that is a technical marvel for a video game to accomplish, it feels too much like real life for me. Yes, I'm complaining that this fantasy life-simulator video game is too immersive and realistic. Life's already stressful enough as-is as someone riddled with several anxiety disorders and struggles to communicate with people; feeling that way while trying to play a singleplayer video game is not something I want to feel. As a result, I get stunlocked and end up not doing anything because I'm too stressed about making the wrong decision.

So, uh...I don't know how to end this, so rambly rant over, I guess. I didn't like this game, and have no intention of ever finishing it, for reasons I'd like to think are valid. I'm gonna stick with more linear games from now on.

This is apparently my 300th log. Huh. Neat, I guess.
Wasn't as big of a fan of this game as I was hoping, considering how much I've seen this game show up on other people's "best games ever made" lists. I don't really know how to put it into words properly, but I just did not vibe with this game. There were a lot of little things I really liked, but most of the big picture stuff was a swing and a miss.

The combat encounters were the biggest offenders here; I get that making you feel overwhelmed was supposed to be the point, but that just ain't fun to me; at least, not in this kind of way. The enemies are very spongy, and there are a lot of them in each encounter. Making enemies extremely spongy rarely works in a game's favor (Fire Emblem Engage is probably the only game I've played where the enemies being spongy as hell actively improved the gameplay experience), and in this game, it just made combat encounters significantly more annoying than they had to be. When I've been conditioned to believe that, in shooters of all kinds, headshotting enemies is a quick and easy way to kill them, having enemies suddenly have to take several headshots to kill was a bit of a shock. This isn't a bad idea on paper, and I actually really like the idea; subverting the player's expectations by flipping genre tropes on their head is a really good way to catch the player off guard, especially when done in a survival horror game. That being said, this game throws far too many enemies that are really annoying to kill at you, and they only get bulkier as the game progresses. Considering how limited your resources are, this makes it very difficult to keep up. And, yes, I know that was literally the point, but I don't like it, and I don't have to like it. I think it speaks volumes about my experience with the game that my favorite parts were the segments where I literally couldn't kill the enemies.

Speaking of those, I want to give my compliments to those sections, because god damn are they good. The library segment was easily my favorite part of the game, and the keycard puzzle in the laboratory was my second favorite part. Your ability to fight back is always a key part in navigating your way through this game; taking away that option for a short period of time makes the idea of "survival horror" very literal in these segments. In the library, your only means of defense in this near pitch-black hellscape is a lantern that can freeze the enemies in place when pointed at them; you can't actually kill them, or even fight them. In the laboratory, you can technically fight back, but you can't actually kill the enemies; only immobilize them for a short period of time. This feeling of being unable to truly fight back makes for a much more amplified horror experience, and I loved that. The library segment in particular genuinely got to me, I could feel the anxiety and fear setting in as I was playing it, and that rarely happens to me anymore due to my overexposure to horror stuff. Huge props to that part of the game; those really good parts are the parts I'll look back on the most, and are the reason I'm not rating this game any lower.

I had originally written a long "review" for this game before this; about how Reload had come out right as I was in the midst of a really rough depressive episode, and how playing it helped me crawl out of that hole. After thinking about it, though, it felt a bit too personal (and, frankly, a bit like-baity) to post for strangers on the internet to read such vulnerable and descriptive details about my personal life, so I'm writing this short little anecdote instead. Just know, this game came out at the perfect time for me when I needed it most, and I cannot be thankful enough for its existence. I've been feeling like shit for the past month or so due to an avalanche of life circumstances piling down on me all at once, and this game was a big help in working my way through it and coming out on the other side. Thank you, Atlus; this was one of the most fulfilling experiences I've ever had playing a game.

Even if I hate a game; and I mean despise it from the depths of my soul; I never give it the lowest possible rating on this site, because there's at least a lot of effort from honest, hardworking people that went behind it, and their work should not go unrecognized.

Just this one time, I'm making an exception to that rule. I, too, am going to join in on beating this long-dead horse.

What is there for me to say about this game, a game so devoid of any kind of passion, creativity, or, dare I say it, S O U L, that hasn't already been said countless times? You already know how much of a cash grab the full release of this game was so obviously intended to be; how much they doubled down on the worst aspects of the earlier alpha builds, to make a convuluted-ass puzzle game that would appeal to the FNAF kids of the time, with pointless L O R E and shit. I have to say, as a self-admitted FNAF kid who was obsessed with that franchise in middle school, I am insulted that they would think this would appeal to me, because I can assure you, I would have hated this even then.

I only played this because it was free through PS Plus, and I thought it would be entertaining for my friends to watch me suffer through this game we had heard so many awful things about. It definitely was entertaining in that regard. This game is so poorly designed from the ground up that even the initial concept of the game; that of a really smart AI that makes it increasingly difficult to pass; worked against the game by making it really annoying to have to find a new way into the house over and over to solve those stupid-ass puzzles. The over-reliance on vague-ass puzzles that only an omnipotent walkthrough would be able to figure out, and on ridiculous platforming to reach the areas needed to progress through the story. It's so ass-backwards that I can't believe this got published in the state it did. The funniest part of my playthrough, however, was this: I couldn't even finish the damn game. No, not because of a lack of trying; I did. I most assuredly did (April update: I actually did finally finish the game. More at the end. Trust me, it gets worse). The reason I couldn't finish was because of a consistent bug that prevented me from progressing further. A key that is required to progress kept randomly disappearing from my inventory, without any rime or reason why, and I had to restart the entirety of the longest act in the game each time it happened because of the way the save system works. By the third time, I just gave up. That anecdote alone should tell you everything you need to know about this creatively bankrupt dumpster fire of a game.

When you're about to think "damn, this game is awful" when playing a game you're really not enjoying, do yourself a favor and compare it to Hello Neighbor. You'll start to see it in a more positive light.

Update: I actually did finally end up beating the game, powering through all the bugs and general brokenness while my friend I was streaming this to laughed his ass off at the rapid degradation of my sanity. It got even worse, which I didn't think was possible. The L O R E minigames to unlock extra abilities all suck. In true Hello Neighbor fashion, they're all super cryptic and never tell you what you're supposed to do, so you just have to trial-and-error your way through this forced gameplay sequence whose mechanics never show up again, outside of a single point in the leadup to the finale. The shopping cart one was easily the worst of the bunch, as there's literally zero indication that you're supposed to put items in the cart during this segment, let alone a list of five very specific items. The only thing that even slightly indicates this is the manakins that chase you around (and never seemed to leave me the fuck alone, holy shit) that have said items in their carts. The closet minigame was also pretty terrible, because of how easy it was to softlock yourself at multiple points, forcing a reset each time, as well as vague directions on where to go.
I genuinely cannot believe this game got any level of success in the horrid state it's in. It's utterly astounding that genuine passion projects that small development teams pour their hearts, souls, and wallets into making, like Chained Echoes, Bokura, and Afterimage, can fly under the radar so easily; meanwhile an apathetic, heartless game devoid of any clear passion to make something worthwhile, like this, is able to make bank and spawn an entire multimedia franchise. Because of my frustration, I've linked the Steam pages for all three of those games I mentioned, because they all deserve far more attention than this game ever did.

Finally got around to playing these after almost 4 years of having them from them being given out to everyone when The Funny happened. I am quite famously bad at shooters, so I played each one on Easy.

Drake's Fortune – Definitely a product of its time, I'll say. There's a lot of jank, and even I can really tell that this was an experimental title for Naughty Dog at the time. Enemy encounters tend to drag on for quite a while with next to no checkpoints, making for some really repetitive combat. The story ain't really much to write home about, but I don't think it was trying to be until Among Thieves; Drake's Fortune just wanted to be a fun action-adventure thrill ride a la Indiana Jones, and it definitely accomplished that.

Among Thieves – The one everyone likes, and I'm no different, this was my favorite of the three. While I wouldn't really go so far as to call it exceptional, it was a substantial improvement over Drake's Fortune in every possible way. I did hate how they often relied on making the enemies spongy as hell to make encounters more difficult to compensate for the additional checkpoints during longer enemy encounters, but this issue would only be doubled down on in...

Drake's Deception – My least favorite of the three; you can tell because it has the longest paragraph. To talk positivity first, it has the largest amount of highest highs in the trilogy, with some of the most insane setpieces I've ever seen in a game, and gunplay that feels even better than Among Thieves (especially with how much better the gun sounds are, god DAMN, they pack a punch now!). All that being said, I feel that this game also has the lowest lows of the three. For one, the aforementioned spongy enemies that plagued Among Thieves are made even spongier, a problem that only gets worse as I reached the final stretch of the game. For two, I felt there were some pretty noticeable problems with the story, most notably with Talbot's Plot Convenience Darts: how often they were used as a cheap and lazy way to progress the story, the fairly glaring plot holes surrounding them (like how Marlowe even got ahold of them in the first place, knowing what's required to make them and where said material is found), and just how generally unsatisfying it feels to see such blatant use of a plot device. I'm working through a Creative Writing major, this kind of stuff really bothers me nowadays; it just shows a lack of care put towards the story the writer(s) want to tell. In spite of that fact, I don't like putting too much weight on a game's story, because, unless it's a visual novel, it's video game first, and I have fun playing it for a good 60% of the game. So while it is my least favorite of the three, I don't outright dislike the game, despite my issues with it.

And now, we move on to 4...in a bit. My school term started today as of the time I'm writing this, so it'll be a minute before I get through it.

Great game, but I think Ryza 2 is my favorite of the trilogy. This game feels like it takes a lot of the fluff out of Ryza 2 and replaces it with different fluff, like a needlessly big, SMT5-adjacent overworld that makes it really hard to find specific materials and enemies without looking it up. The fact that there are a staggering 11 party members; 4 more than the previous game; constrains resources quite a lot, as you really need to be crafting the best gear you can for everybody to keep up with the increasing power of enemies. Before you get to that, though, the early game for this one is such a drag; it takes a really long time before it feels like you're really in the swing of things and crafting some quality stuff, and for the first 10-12 hours of the game, you're gonna be stuck scraping by with whatever crappy gear and items you can get.

That being said, once it does get going, it really gets going; it's got by far and away the deepest and most complex crafting and combat systems in the trilogy. All of it culminates into a very satisfying game to sink your teeth into, even if some of it feels a bit undercooked, and some of it overwhelming. Loved the new iteration of the Wind Shoes.