2 reviews liked by Norry


ChatGPT takes over the world, but you're lead to believe humanity is locked in a struggle against a hostile race of monsters who made the planet inhospitable. While I can't give it any points for originality, I do like the story overall.

As you set off to eliminate the really big evil monsters to get the cores which actually combine into a bigger core for some reason, you start to uncover the truth behind your mission and who you really are, and throughout the game Eve is a very consistent character. She has a mild tone, but she's not boring either, I quite liked her. However, pretty much every other character is completely forgettable and a lot of the dialogue is just out of place or awkward. Definitely the weakest part of the game. There's only three characters worth mentioning and those are Eve, Tachy and Raven.

The gameplay is not quite hack and slash, but as you become more powerful and unlock more abilities, it does become increasingly easier to deal with groups of enemies. It starts out as more of a challenge where you try to play carefully, balancing combos between perfect parries and dodges, sometimes chaining them into other moves. They flow together well, like the blink dodge into a stun, which lets you charge up your beta moves or do a full combo. You eventually get a gun too, which has a separate dodge mechanic which exposes a ranged weakness. Further on from that, they utilise the gun in some boss fights to interrupt them using an instant kill move, so you can tell they had a clear vision for how combat should work and flow in this game. Not that it's perfect, you could just spam block and get a perfect parry most of the time, or constantly use burst skills to deal with everything until the game feels completely repetitive.

My favourite use of the gun though is the two sections where all melee combat is disabled and you're sent through human experimentation facilities because apparently you're play Dead Space now, complete with exploding body bag enemies.

What I enjoyed most in this game was just exploring the world, because you never knew when you were going to find a new outfit for Eve. That's right, the true purpose of the game is to dress the main character up, and the amount of nanosuits available is impressive. Some are more revealing that others, so if you want to be a degenerate then you can, but if you're not into that then you can wear the bear suit which covers you up completely. The devs have got you covered. There's also New Game Plus on launch which added even more suits, even if they are just alternative colours.

We know it's a certified RPG too because there's fishing involved. They had to make use of that PS5 controller tech somehow.

The game is great when it sticks to the basics. The combat is fantastic, the character development and world building is good, some of the minigames are awesome (chocobo racing is my favourite). What lets the whole thing down is the overdone extras. So many unnecessary stops and starts and hand-holding (world intel, CHAD, unnecessarily slow cutscene like sequences where you walk slowly and press L2/R2) as well as way, way too many minigames. It just felt like a chore to get through. So while there's a 20 hour gem hidden in here, you're forced to sift through 20 hours of rubbish to get to it.