Finally finished this and it genuinely blew me away. One of the most ambitious games ever made with a scope that still feels huge decades later. Probably the most deep, unpredictable and utterly insane story I've seen in the medium. It covers any themes they could get past the censors - mental health, organized religion, free will, classism, genocide to name a few. (I don't think the ESRB played past 10 hours.) The presentation is outstanding with dynamic in-engine cutscene direction not over-relying on FMVs. It's a wonderful looking work in general with 2D sprites in dense 3D scifi environments and awesome mech / biblical / eldritch designs. When a lot of other RPGs on the console were using prerendered backgrounds these fully explorable multi-level populated towns seemed magic. The 360 camera made me feel like I was peering into little dioramas. I also enjoy the combat! Fighter style combo inputs either on foot or in giant mechs with complex mechanics and amazing animation.

It's well known that the developers ran out of time and money on the second disc and it becomes apparent with how the storytelling style suddenly changes and it's not nearly as open. This can even be felt in the music with how there isn't nearly enough unique tracks to cover all the different scenes and locations. So Xenogears is categorically unfinished. Disc 1 is really consistent though and by itself is more compelling and fully featured than other entire games. It was one of the longest of its day. If Square had given the team what they needed to complete it as fully envisioned with a Final Fantasy tier budget, it coulda been the best damn RPG ever. Even with those limitations and some frustrating moments, I think Disc 2 really picked up and reeled me back in, and the last hours were peak fiction.

I don't love everything about Xenogears, even the story - it's definitely not flawless and could be brutal to get through at times so I wouldn't usually give a "10/10" BUT I strongly feel that it's a work of art. That rating represents the huge impression it made on me and my respect for the vision and creativity. Anything less wouldn't be right. It continually impressed me for 50 hours and the gameplay remained fun. It's not easily recommendable because of its unintuitive design and sluggish English text speed (you NEED to apply a text speed code). But if you love Chrono Trigger and FF7 you owe it to yourself to try it out... I consider them a holy trinity of sorts.

There's not a ton of complexity as to how Severed Steel operates and some elements need fine-tuning, but I can't help but appreciate how much the game accomplishes with surprisingly little. I'm a fan of the simple and effective UI; your aiming reticle is surrounded by two bars that convey how much ammo and slo-mo time is left (so these gauges are always near the center of attention) and the flashing light on your gun also changes color (from light neon colors to yellow to red) so you're constantly keyed in on when you'll need to pick up a gun early or engage/disengage when running low on supplies. Enemies stand out from the environment thanks to the cel-shaded enemy outlines, and upon death emit a distinct explosion sound-effect so there's no ambiguity when quickly rifling through targets during firefights or when picking off enemies from afar. Guns feel great to aim and fire in slow-mo, mainly because there's very noticeable recoil when firing in real-time; the contrast really helps sell the necessity of the feature. I also love Severed Steel's kick as both a form of attack and traversal; the obvious purpose is your primary melee attack while holding a gun if you don't want to expend your limited magazine to finish off an enemy as well as kicking open doors, but it can also be used to quickly ascend up walls or kick off of grounded/aerial enemies if your double jump isn't enough. The same goes for the arm cannon; you can fire holes into any surface if you don't feel like hunting down stairs/doorways for objectives, but it also provides a nice desperation option to instantly eliminate shielded enemies or drop heavy grunts down to another floor if you find yourself without a weapon.

Despite the appealing core gameplay, Severed Steel can often feel a bit repetitive. Enemy variety feels lacking since the player is usually approaching enemies in a similar manner (that is, entering slo-mo while using stunts to efficiently dispatch foes while firing into their heads/backsides), and I would have liked to see enemies that had to be specifically eliminated using the arm cannon or melee as mix-ups. The Rogue Steel mode does touch upon this with random enemy buffs that force such approaches, but at times I feel like this mode prefers to lengthen combat by overwhelming the player with excess enemies with more health. I do think the game could have also leaned a bit more into its parkour elements with additional stages that focused upon traversal and dodging/quickly disposing of enemies, as there were only a couple of timed story missions that necessitated a rush to the end. Finally, I have to agree with HotPocketHPE that the slo-mo gauge is unbalanced; you'll practically never run out of bullet time as long as you're staying in stunt mode (super easy since there are floors and walls aplenty to slide and wallrun), though this is again addressed from playing Rogue Steel via the "Rebalanced Bullet-Time" unlockable modifier. Even with these gripes however, Severed Steel is a pretty easy recommendation considering how content-rich the game is from its many different modes and extra campaign/workshop levels to tinker with. It was an absolute steal at 80% off on the Steam Spring Sale, and I can't wait to see how Greylock Studio iterates and improves upon their already fantastic formula.

Genuinely, if you're still irony poisoned, or forced to play it (hi,) or an active follower of the franchise, play this one for yourself. No, it's not worth 10 bucks. No, it absolutely does not stand on its own, brush up on (don't play) 4 and 6 first. Yes, this and the past two games should just be one game. These are the leading reasons why I'm not rating it higher, but my god, I did not ever expect that Banban would land more than one conscious hit with its humor, let alone more than I could count on one hand. The quality isn't an up-and-down jumble like 6 was, it's more consistently middling (which is far better than anything that's come before this,) but god is it an absurd adventure at times. I don't even know what to say anymore. You win, Lena. You win.

Okay so like I got no.2 on the hungarian 2024 week 19 leaderboards after playing for only one day since like 8 years ago, does that count as beating the game? Anyways it sucks lol, it's designed in a nasty way that takes advantage of short attention spans and locks you in a feedback loop of hundreds of mini achievements you can achieve under one run, gets you addicted slowly and manipulates you into spending money on it, while also pushing ads in your face and rewarding you insanely heavily for watching them. Yes I just unironically wrote a review about Subway Surfers...

Having now beat it twice, I feel pretty conflicted on this game. The combat and bosses can be really awesome when they get a chance to shine. The music has clear inspirations but is beautiful all the same. However, most of the story has no heart, the writing is terrible, the side missions are almost exclusively mid, and the art direction has no cohesion.
The only thing more stale than most of this game is the conversation surrounding it. But when the game has as hype as a final few hours as it does, its hard to not be excited for a possible sequel

I never expected any gacha to actually get me, but it appears even I can be fallible. Has an incredibly charming fantasy world that has something for basically everybody to enjoy. Starts off as a very early One Piece-y fantasy RPG adventure and allows itself to branch off into so many other directions at a scale that fills me with absolute wonder and amazement. Gameplay was kinda mind-numbing early on but the later parts really gripped me with how much variety you get in builds and team composition, though I still have a lot to learn about what the hell a grid is. Also been having a very smooth F2P experience personally, though I probably should owe a lot of that to good timing with fully diving in during the 10th Anni celebration. Narmaya is literally me.