I've always had a very controversial relationship with Final Fantasy, especially with Final Fantasy fans which might be one of the dumbest fandoms I've ever had the disgrace to interact with; however, I also managed to know a few people who are huge fans of this colossal series and they really belong to some of my closest friends to date.

The thing that I respected the most is that, even if I managed to not touch a single game of this franchise for literally years and started to re-explore the genre with Atlus games, they still managed not to yell in my ear to try FF again and genuinely waited for me to try to get into it again.

Now, I did not start again with this one, but with FFIV DS, which I found it to be...nice, but I think I should try the 2D version next time, eventually I'll talk more about it when I'll review that game.

Now, onto FFVI: I always take my sweet time to beat a JRPG, especially because they tend to be very long and with lots of different scenarios to digest before moving to the next one, yet I manged to beat this whole game in just 4 days.

4 days. Not only it never happened with a Final Fantasy, not only with a JRPG, but I barely remember whenever it happened with other games with the same length.
By having already played VII and X, which I think to be great games, I always thought Final Fantasy is a very great franchise that does not fit with me, really. It's like "yeah I perfectly understand its greatness" and it's cool but not something I'd go nuts over it.

But then I witnessed Sabin doing a suplex to a train.

Even though the plot itself might have few hiccups in its writing, I think the characters are some of the best I have ever seen; Locke might be my favourite FF character ever, with Celes and Terra being close seconds. I also think Kefka is an insanely great villain; whenever people point out he might be "weak" in terms of writing, I always imagine it's because people think of chaotic evil villains as "shallow" when it's actually incredibly hard not only to make a villain like that believable, but also an embodiment of the theme of nihilism and how that clashes with the indomitable human spirit who just manages to find a way to find meaningfulness in nothingless. It's not just Kefka being a silly little psycho, it's literally how he embodies what you know you're struggling against, but in spite of that you can still find an answer.

But what elevates this game so much to me it's the fact a lot of very impactful and important scenes are actually optional and play depending on your interest of different characters: you might never know what sad story lies in one of the characters you never gave a damn about and the game won't try to shove in your troath anything to prove otherwise, but if you change your mind you'll find out. And it will hurt like a bitch.

Final Fantasy VI is an absolute masterclass of character writing and storytelling that gains both actively and retroactively, with some of the highest moments I've ever experienced in a videogame.

Fuck the Colosseum and the Cultists' Tower though those fucking suck lotta dick.

When I hear people saying how Sunbreak isn't Monster Hunter I always check for two things, and usually at least one of them checks out:
1) They're World fans
2) They "used to play Freedom Unite back in the day with their good ol' PSP"

Don't fall for the common accusations, Sunbreak is the absolute pinnacle of Monster Hunter combat, paired with one of the best monster rosters in the series: you've got Astalos, Primalzeno, Gore Magala, Lucent Narga and many other stupid good fights to learn and get your new hat out of.

A thing I usually criticize about Iceborne is the sets balancing: you want to do GS? Fatalis. CB? Fatalis. DB which are literally elemental killing machines? Fatalis, elemental sucks ASS in that game. Pair those weapons with a full Fatalis armor (or one AT Velk piece if you fancy) and slot in the decos you just grinded 100+ tempered Teostra for and you're good to go!

Now here, things are different: any weapon has so many possibilities, in terms of both elemental and raw damage and skills you want to implement to your playstyle. Berserker, Strife, Blood Rite, Buildup Boost; you name them, they got them.

My very reasons for it not being 5 stars are bond to the fact the expansion starts VERY slowly, like 3 stars worth of missions are mostly boring fights you already did with a fire/blast variation of a newcomer you fought in base Rise BUT the second you slay that damn Astalos the game just starts to ramp up and it NEVER STOPS.
My other reason is the fact once you get to the endgame it gets a bit disorienting for all the stuff it introduces you, so it takes a while to understand that + it slows down quite a bit because the real juicy stuff starts after you reach MR100, with Scorned Magnamalo and the Risen fights which are just that good and challenging!

Man I love this game, what a wonderful life-ruining experience.

"Gen 5 is the absolute worst AC generation"->They played it on PS3
"Gen 5 is actually good you're just bad"->They played it on Xbox 360

Unfortunately, I've got to play the PS3 version in OG hardware and made Dark Souls' OG Blighttown look like Metal Gear Solid 2 in comparison. I have no feelings towards this game but FromSoft should be ashamed to have pulled one of the absolute worst running games I have ever played. Why is this generation such a pain just to be played normally??? On OG PS3 this runs like dogshit, let alone RPCS3; on Xbox 360 I saw it runs smoothly but you need good-ass hardware if you want to play it on Xenia, otherwise you've got to play it WITHOUT AC TEXTURES????

I've always closed an eye on From Software's absolute lack of capacity in terms of optimization, but this is too much I'm sorry.

Booting up this game was one of my biggest mistakes of 2024. I wanted to study for my next exam this month because "why not let's start the year with one less exam" but then I try this game out and suddenly I have clocked 13 hours and done all the routes of this game and it's still not enough. I need more. It's kinda sad for me knowing we don't get to see more games in the series with this direction in gameplay, because it's easily my favourite as of now (I still prefer LR overall, mind you, but this one is a close second).

Mission quality is straight up amazing, customization is insanely good as well, replayability-well if after 3 routes I felt like I wanted more (and there is, with hard mode and some missions left to unlock) that should speak volumes on how replayable this shit is, and overall it's insane how much of a glowup this game is from base 4!

They just saw the base and said "yeah make all the areas open and make the player go batshit insane with the builds, so much he can't even see himself on the screen for how much you can chainboost and overboost yourself". Game also features Arms Forts which are these giant machine bosses which is not a new concept per se but the way they implemented them in the game just wipes mostly everything they went for before this. Don't you ever give me "mAsSiVe Mt" after Spirit of Motherwill istg.

Sadly, chapter 4 missions are kinda frustrating and not as fun as the other ones, but it's absolutely forgivable imo for a game this experimental. What a mistake, man, how do I study without thinking about this game for the next month???

It's incredibly hard for me to talk about this game because on one hand it tries to balance what Nexus did in terms of gameplay...but still it carries over what Nexus did, and what Nexus did is that essentially your AC sucks complete dick now and the power fantasy you may have now is history compared to previous generations. It's light work to think how Last Raven is the hardest game if your missions are Silent Line difficult and you play with Nexus ACs.
This might be an extremely personal take here, but I think your AC being way weaker in Last Raven actually conveys the feeling of dread and despair way better, every single mission it's you fighting for your life because now you don't just "defeat" your enemies, but straight up kill them with "DEAD" written aside. And that puts me on the other hand of why I loved Last Raven so much.

The way the game portrays the feeling of everything coming to an end in a very dark and eerie way is incredibly impactful, the "main characters" are way more fleshed out than any other in the franchise (until now) and every choice you make actively impacts how the story goes, who dies and who doesn't and every single time you take part on a mission the clock is ticking; Last Raven's story takes place in 24 hours, and every single one of them counts. And it's not because the game said so, YOU make them count and the main characters in the game are making them count with their own actions that also change on what choices you made.

Last Raven is a game where there's no compromise, there's no "next time I'm gonna get you!", because there's no tomorrow. Everyone, you included, is on a last stand. And the game conveys that in such a good way that I don't think I'll see another videogame telling this so well very soon. Corporations made tons of mistakes for the sake of power and money, they fucked up so bad but the ones being put on the line for this are soldiers, Ravens and innocents all over the world.

Kino

It's not the first time I'm checking backloggd reviews just to see some takes here and there only for getting into some of the worst ways I could waste my time into. Like, I get it, backloggd reviews are bad, but I'm getting tired of the pattern of people throwing a lot of crap to one game, checking out their profile and their score graph looks like the stairs they've fallen from when they were children with their favourite game being Full Metal Daemon Muramasa. It's funny but gets boring after a while.

One other thing, I don't really like "reviewing" stuff, it's more about conveying how I felt playing the games I played, I can easily review a game but have you ever done that? It gets so stale so quick and nobody is paying you to talk about a product no one gives a shit about just for some likes, especially if you're gonna be controversial about it.

That being said, we can finally talk about how this game treated me like a bitch because I didn't know "OP-Intensify" was a thing to carry from AC3 so here I am. Game has literally the best mission quality so far, with some of them having the best scenarios I've ever seen in an AC; it is a relentless gauntlet that doesn't let you go until the game is done. Remember how Master of Arena wanted to end every mission with an AC fight? Well, here you're gonna get used to play 1v2. Oh, with your remaining AP and ammo, of course. And don't think even for a second that what comes before it might be barely as easy as you hope it to be, I'm already having "Defend Lawdas Factory" PTSD over here.

Lucky for me, though, I'm a sucker for this kind of challenges: the game has some of the most build variety I have ever seen and made me learn (again) that most of the gameplan is made in the garage. Back weapons and Left Arm weapons have wayyy more options than we used to have, and the new part designs for this game are insanely good, I really wanted to rebuild my 3 ACs from scratch just because how good looking those were and how many options this game makes you toy with is just insane.

And, on top of that, one of the most compelling soundtracks in the franchise so far: Kota Hoshino's last "banger tracks" I remembered were from Master of Arena and, while 2 and 3 were fine with some very good tracks here and there, Silent Line just obliterates them in overall quality.

Only real gripes I have is that the arena didn't have as much care as the other titles (even though it gets hard pretty quick, the top 3 wasn't that hard to begin with MEANWHILE CORPSE MAKER MADE ME LOSE MY MIND) and the final boss, while having literally the best design I've ever seen in AC along with Nine-ball Seraph, doesn't put quite a show and that's a shame since the difficulty of this game has been very high through most of my playthrough. Also, even though I really enjoy challenging games, this one raised the bar a bit too high in some frustrating ways: this game almost never refills your AP and ammo, so you're getting some of the missions with whole difficult chunks to do in one go and if you fuck up ONE section you know you're not gonna last for the end of them. Challenging me through movement, puzzles, fighting skills is very fun but not when you stretch the whole bunch of them in one go, it just gets tedious and frustrating.

But that being said, Silent Line has it all: customization, memorable missions, memorable soundtrack, very compelling atmosphere and some of the best designs I've seen for the mechs. Do I like it more than MOA? To be fair, I don't know at all because these two games nail a lot of stuff in different ways so it's really hard to me to compare them. But that aside, I'm getting a break from this franchise since I've been playing these games nonstop and they're mad good, mind you, but I don't want to risk a "burnout" from playing to much of the same thing, especially when the difficulty bar gets exhausting like this game does. Incredible game, but for the love of god play AC3 before this.

I am VERY TEMPTED to give this to 4.5 because the solo Fatalis fight was one of the most intense things ever along with the Raging Brachydios final phase. It basically redeems most of World's issues BUT:
-Clutch claw is terrible
-The endgame grind is absolutely terrible and the whole TUs are badly managed
-I don't want to see that deco system ever again in my life
-I just don't get this game's AI thank god they went back to the older one for Rise
-Tempered monsters still suck

THAT BEING SAID: this expansion is awesome, there are a lot of fun fights and way better treatment of subspecies who instead of just doing the gimmick but MORE (did someone say black diablos?) they have a whole identity of their own and the fight are pretty different from the og ones (blackveil vaal hazak is one of the worst things ever). I'm really not fond of base world but I highly suggest you getting your hands on the expansion, it is WAY better