In an even more meta scenario, the devs were controlled by the black whispers to implement tons of bad design decisions in to an otherwise incredible game. The white whispers were in control for most of the development, for sure, but man - this was quite a roller coaster in terms of enjoyment. Perhaps the game that has given me the most consistent whiplash to date.

I want to give this a 10/10. It's better than Part 1 in every way. It's an incredible achievement for a JRPG in so many ways. I have so many thoughts that I must simply reduce this review to a positives and negatives list or I'll be here all day.

Positives:

- Queen's Blood is so much fun! I was constantly looking forward to every match. Honestly, I could put this partially in the negative section as this was the one aspect of the game that there wasn't enough of! I loved crafting a deck, finding new cards, and fine tuning my strategy all the way to the end.
- The combat system in this game has got to be the best of any JRPG. I don't see what even comes close at this point. I wish every game with a cast of characters played this way. It oozes production value, precise control, spectacle, and multi tasking so well that it makes other games look like a joke in comparison. It's in the same category as something like Elden Ring or Baldur's Gate 3 in this regard where it just makes other similar games seem like they're severely lacking all of a sudden, even if it felt great before hand. Remake had this effect to some extent, but it wasn't quite there. This is THERE.
- Transitioning between linear sections and more open sections was one way that this game was paced super well. As you'll read later, this goes sour in many instances - but in general it was a great idea to keep things fresh - in theory. For the most part, it worked very well. Games that are consistently open world are almost always tiring unless done right. This game tries to avoid that and mostly succeeds by giving distinct points of A to B in between the large areas.
- The characters are full of personality and depth, plus the party has a lot of great dynamics. Not only is everyone's relationship with Cloud interesting, but most of the cast have fun or unique interactions with each other, as well. This makes the crew feel like a true ensemble - it's not just about Cloud. I love that. Games that heavily focus everything on the main character and make it totally revolve around them can often get tiresome - especially if it's a long game. This focus on making sure everyone gets their time in the spotlight really helps you care about the party as a whole.
- In relation to the last point, I loved that the party was broken up time and time again and they forced you to spend some time with very specific groups of people. However, this leads to a major issue with the game, at the same time. More on that later.
- Yuffie is extremely fun to play as. This is strange for me, as I mostly played her as a ranged character which I generally dislike. For whatever reason, she had the most flair in battles and it was fun to pull things off with her. Using the lightning discharge ability paired with ATB Boost, doppleganger, windstorm, and then spamming her shuriken was so satisfying. I only played as other characters when I had to. When she wasn't available I didn't have as much fun in combat. I do enjoy playing as Cloud, though, which is good since he's usually playable.
- This is one of the funniest games I've ever played. In particular, there's one point that made me actually laugh out loud for a solid 5 seconds which never happens to me unless I'm watching something with others. Yuffie's grand introduction to the group, followed by Cloud simply saying "Cool." and walking away is possibly the greatest comedic timing I've ever seen in a game. That's the peak of the comedy, but there are tons of other examples throughout such as Red's MJ moment. Most of it revolves around Cloud's utter disregard for things going on around him which I find absolutely hilarious. Cait Sith, Red, Vincent, Yuffie, Barret, and multiple side characters have their moments though. Even Aerith got a couple smirks out of me and I don't particularly care for her character.
- The varied environments kept exploration feeling fresh, despite some issues in this regard. I also liked the different chocobo's - but it would have probably been more fun to retain the abilities of each of them instead of only having one ability per region. I know it helps make the regions topographically distinct, but moving around in the world was lackluster as is.
- A good portion of the green "side quests" are pretty great. Some of them contain things that shouldn't even be optional as they add a lot of character progression and back story that feels essential. You would think this would strictly be a good thing, as a common complaint of RPGs is that they have uninteresting or pointless side quests. (I'm looking at you, FF 16). Somehow, it's not - because there are SO MANY. I'll elaborate in the negative section.
- Some of the minigames are fun, but again - there are too many and they add to the cluttering of the map.
- Despite certainly being difficult to follow at times, the story presentation is quite remarkable. Especially the ending, after I did some thorough research on what probably maybe actually is going on at the end. It's a really intriguing setup for the next game, if it's what I assume to be true.
- It's beautiful. People saying the game doesn't look great are out of their mind. From the scenery to the character models to the animations to the snappy UI - everything is lovely looking. I played on performance mode, of course. 30fps is unplayable.
- The soundtrack is, as always with FF, fantastic. No surprise here. The amount of unique tracks and remixes is pretty wild, though.

Wow, sounds like a pretty flawless game. How could something have so many high points - so many things that exceed expectations - and not be a 10/10?

Well...

Negatives:

- There's just too much. Too many minigames, too many side quests, too many "points of interest" from Chadley, etc. I despise the "it's optional, just ignore it" argument because why would I want to miss out when the game has shown me multiple times that there is interesting pay off to a lot of these things? The disappointing part is that due to the large volume, a lot of them fall flat, as well. So you're left wanting to do everything because half of it is worthwhile. That sucks. This is a half-baked explanation on my issue here, but I don't want to write an entire essay just to make this point. Moving on.
- I said I enjoyed the party being broken up so you can experience all the different dynamics. However, the most frustrating part about this game is having to switch Materia back and forth manually every time this happens. Once available, my party was consistently Cloud, Yuffie, and Red. Cloud as a mixed attacker, Yuffie as magic, and Red on defense for the most part but also a physical beast. Loved the composition here. I tried to always have a similar setup regardless of the party. So when I had to use Barret I'd replace either Yuffie or Red with him. When I had to use Tifa, I was replacing either Cloud or Red with her. Aerith replaced Yuffie, etc. I had specific materia set to each of them and I had to constantly switch it up manually instead of being able to just, say, copy and paste a set from one character to another easily. I probably spent a total of 2 hours over the course of the game doing this. Just another way the game wasted my time. I ended up dreading character swaps instead of looking forward to the interesting setups they would provide.
- Like I said earlier, the pacing is mostly appropriate. Except for the many times it's not. The game is so long that there are many times where for 5-10 hours the pacing is wonderful. You go from a open area to a narrow chapter then back in to a new open area. However, all of the open areas just have way too much to do in them. Again, half of it being a waste of time. Things like Kid G, the Moogle houses, anything regarding obtaining the chocobos (or searching with them), Johnny fetch quests, etc. It got so bad that by Gongaga I just started ignoring half the side material unless it was reasonably on my path forward. This is what people seem to suggest doing if I think there's too much - but this just gives me fear of missing out. Not a good feeling to have in a game with so many cool things in it.
- In relation to the last point, I will point out that obtaining chocobo's through forced stealth sections was very irritating. I hate when games do that. It quite literally slows the game to a halt for no reason. Why is this still a thing? Didn't we learn from Spiderman Mary Jane missions? Or perhaps the many cases of this being a problem prior to that? Not only that, but controlling the Chocobo is cumbersome. The easiest way to express this is by comparing it to the horse (Torrent) in Elden Ring. That thing controls like an absolute gem, which mounts NEVER accomplish. This game is no exception. The amount of times I barely overshot being in the "correct" position to pick up a buried item while on chocoback was super frustrating and made me just not want to do it even though they lead to valuable items. Again, I felt punished by my desire to earn cool things in-game.
- Chadley is annoying, yes. What's more annoying than the bot himself is the way that his communication works. Why must we sit through unskippable and completely useless cutscenes/animations over and over again?! Just let me do the thing and move on. If Chadley MUST speak to me, just do it over comms with a his silly face appearing in the corner while I continue to walk around. Forcing me to stand there and waste between 10-30 seconds at least 50 times during the game is insane. This goes for other things, too. It's not just Chadley's fault. The simple act of popping the UI up to show you got an extra yellow dot takes forevvverrrr. It's a wild over sight to make these things drag on this much. This amplifies the other issues I have with pacing and length/bloat. Why did we need to specifically need to follow the black robes in Nibelheim at an actual snail's pace for 20 minutes?! Ahhhhhhh!
- Why are we doing these monotonous puzzles? Box pushing, vacuuming, box throwing, etc? Can we please stop doing this? Please? It's actually, literally, totally 100% pointless.

I'm probably missing things but I'm going to cut myself off here. My point is, this game is lovely in so many ways but they also very frequently go out of their way to slow you down. I spent 85 ish hours with the game. I know some people that have done everything probably spent more like 120+.

This game should have roughly 30% of it removed. It's just too much. Saying that main lining the games "golden path" is the answer is a bad excuse. I want to experience most of what the game has to offer. The good stuff, though. Not the pointless stuff. The problem is you can't distinguish which is which until you're in the thick of it.

I probably could have spent 30-40 hours with the game and rushed through, but I would have missed out on so many cool things! The 85 hours I spent should mean that I did everything the game has to offer. Instead, I missed out on a lot despite being burnt out by the end. I would love to get back 20 of those hours and not have had to sift through nonsense during it. All it did was drag the games quality down a couple pegs.

Oh well, this seems to be a trend nowadays - at least with AAA games. It's not unique to this one.

I can't wait for Part 3. It's going to be a wild ride. Here's hoping it's not as densely packed with things wildly varying in quality.

Shadow of the Colossus was a fascinating experience for me because I didn't play the original version on the PS2 back then, however, it was more complicated than I expected.
After hearing how unique and special this game is for years now, I finally decided to play it.
The story in Shadow of the Colossus is slightly ambiguous, but the vast, empty environments and the melancholic atmosphere make up for the story's ambiguity. Overall, it's a surprisingly decent story even if it's absent for the most part.
Unlike the story though, the gameplay is very basic, even though it's oddly enjoyable and satisfying.
The Colossi are absolutely spectacular; they're undoubtedly the highlight of the game, alongside the immense scale of the game and its gorgeous environments.
Also, the music is really good and the audio design is fantastic.
However, even though the gameplay is interesting, the repetitious nature of the gameplay loop gets slightly boring after a while, and the controls, camera and handling are so clumsy and bad in some instances, they make the game almost unplayable at times, ruining the entire experience, and that's very unfortunate.

Pros:
+ Serviceable narrative
+ Exciting albeit basic gameplay
+ Immense scale
+ Stunning visuals
+ Great music

Cons:
- Tiring gameplay loop
- Very awkward controls, camera & handling

Narrative: 6/10
Gameplay: 4/10
Music: 8/10
Graphics/Audio: 9/10

Final Rating: 6/10
- Decent -
Shadow of the Colossus looks like a PS4 game, however, it still plays like a PS2 game, unfortunately.
Regardless, it's a very unique and special experience even to this day... I just expected something more from a high quality modern Remake.

Do I recommend it?:
If you're looking for a fun videogame experience, I probably wouldn't recommend it, but if you're looking for a unique videogame experience, I'd say yes.