This is one of the most frustrating games I've played. The core concept of defending towns from rampaging giants is cool and can be fun in short bursts. The story is pretty bland but the characters actually manage to be fairly likeable.

That's where the positives end. The gameplay never evolves beyond introducing more frustrating enemy types as the game progresses. The controls are really bad, the main character is very slippery and will often get stuck on geometry or in the armpit of one of the monsters. Combat against the smaller enemies is just tedious button-mashing. Some later enemy types wear armor that must be removed to defeat them but the requirements to break the armor are really annoying and rely on the very spotty enemy AI doing certain attacks. Overall, despite a decent concept a lack of polish ruins the game.

I don't want to be too harsh on this since it was made by a small studio but this is just not good. Walking is painfully slow, the few puzzles are pathetically easy, the graphics aren't very impressive, and the story and voice acting are embarrassingly bad. Nobody acts like a real human being and the way the plot played out reminded me of The Room. Hands down the most enjoyable scene involves the main character killing about a dozen gargoyles one by one simply by walking into them. It doesn't make anymore sense in context.

One of my favorite games of all time and definitely my favorite RPG. The turn-based battle system is really well-done and allows for a good amount of strategy and decision making during encounters. The Sphere Grid is an interesting progression system that allows you to develop characters as you see fit while still giving them unique niches in the party. Blitzball is also a fantastic minigame.

I really love the story and characters as well. Some of the characters are a little divisive but I think they're all interesting and they all get time to shine and have decent arcs. I think Wakka in particular has a pretty interesting character arc. The world of Spira still looks really good to this day and it's a well fleshed-out setting with a distinctive look and feel.

Overall, this game is pretty good. I'm a huge Star Wars fan and I love the Complete Saga so I tried to temper my expectations for this game. I knew it could never live up to the version of the game that I can imagine without the limits of time, resources, or practicality.

It's definitely not perfect. The levels are very short, most of them are vehicle levels and are over in a matter of minutes. The concept of character classes is interesting but the implementation is a bit off. A lot of the old abilities are gone and the new abilities are shoehorned onto characters just because they broadly fit into a class even if it doesn't make sense for them.

But in the end those don't detract from the experience too much and I understand that concessions had to be made. Where the game really shines is in the open world and attention to detail. All the planets are fun to explore and brimming with detail. You can tell a lot of care was put into it. The character roster is massive and full of obscure characters like Mister Bones and Jubnuk that is a real treat for diehard fans.

The combat system is also surprisingly fun, although most encounters are so easy you don't get many opportunities to dig into it. The humor and writing were pretty on point. While obviously geared to a young audience, I still got a chuckle out of it pretty often. It's a great game, just don't go in with sky-high expectations.