Trent
Only reason I got through this game was because of my friends, and more than half of them quit before beating this expansion. The story was bad even for the basic Final Fantasy "collect the crystals of light" story telling, and while that's only scratching the surface it really doesn't get much deeper than that. Not to mention the boring dungeons and mundane gameplay that really doesn't get half good until the next expansion. Some classes still aren't even remotely fun and I'm the third expansion. The best part of this expansion is how A Realm Reborn actually came to be, and I highly encourage all who don't already know its story to look into it. There's an incredible documentary series on it with developer interviews and it's overall very fascinating and inspiring.
I'm also not going to act like the next expansion Heavensward is as amazing as people make it out to be. It's severely over hyped as most media tend to be, but it is of a much higher quality than ARR in almost every regard and I personally did find myself more invested in its narrative and characters, not to mention the dungeons which do become a lot more fun, especially in the post game. However I personally can't find it within myself to tell some poor soul to play through this pile of shit to get to what comes directly after. The third expansion Stormblood isn't even good either and not going to lie it has a lot of the same pacing problems ARR had.
Post stormblood update: This fucking sucks
I'm also not going to act like the next expansion Heavensward is as amazing as people make it out to be. It's severely over hyped as most media tend to be, but it is of a much higher quality than ARR in almost every regard and I personally did find myself more invested in its narrative and characters, not to mention the dungeons which do become a lot more fun, especially in the post game. However I personally can't find it within myself to tell some poor soul to play through this pile of shit to get to what comes directly after. The third expansion Stormblood isn't even good either and not going to lie it has a lot of the same pacing problems ARR had.
Post stormblood update: This fucking sucks
2022
The remake lost a lot of the charm the original had and I can't think of a lot of reasons to play this over the original version
The localization is much worse than the fan translation from more than a decade and a half ago and I think it’s the heart of this remakes issues. While there isn't many discrepancies, the ones that are there are horrible and ruin a lot of what made the original translation so special and memorable. I would even go as far to describe them as creative liberty rather than translation. Aeon Genesis got it right in 2008. On the topic of text, in the original game the font for each chapter changed depending on the aesthetic of the chapter itself, and it added a lot to the charm and aesthetic of the game. In the remake, they replaced the fonts with one single generic font... it sounds extremely nitpicky but trust me it does add a lot to the game
The difficulty is easier than the original which is shocking because the game was already easy to begin with, and also some of the new music sounds when compared to the originals, but that's entirely subjective
I don’t think this is a horrible way to play this game, because it is a graphically beautiful game and arguably the best HD2D game, but if possible please do give the original version with the translation
The localization is much worse than the fan translation from more than a decade and a half ago and I think it’s the heart of this remakes issues. While there isn't many discrepancies, the ones that are there are horrible and ruin a lot of what made the original translation so special and memorable. I would even go as far to describe them as creative liberty rather than translation. Aeon Genesis got it right in 2008. On the topic of text, in the original game the font for each chapter changed depending on the aesthetic of the chapter itself, and it added a lot to the charm and aesthetic of the game. In the remake, they replaced the fonts with one single generic font... it sounds extremely nitpicky but trust me it does add a lot to the game
The difficulty is easier than the original which is shocking because the game was already easy to begin with, and also some of the new music sounds when compared to the originals, but that's entirely subjective
I don’t think this is a horrible way to play this game, because it is a graphically beautiful game and arguably the best HD2D game, but if possible please do give the original version with the translation
1998
This review contains spoilers
True ending and bad ending spoilers ahead
.
.
.
.
.
.
Replayed to get all 108 stars of destiny and it was very worth it. I also did the bad ending again during this play-through and man it is so well done. I didn't give Nanami's character the respect she deserved before, because throughout the game I noticed how she was always at odds with herself and wanted to tell the main character to quit and just run away from the war. She occasionally threw around the idea but bottled it up until the Neclord segment where there was a whole segment and ending dedicated to it, both of which are extremely well done. On the topic of the true ending, for some reason I've seen a lot of controversy surrounding the true ending and if you're one of the people who hate it please play the game and try to make your takeaway something more than "they go to war"
That being said this game is somehow even more buggy than I remember from my first play-through and the translation is even WORSE with the true ending and I've come to the conclusion where I don't think anyone dared to proof read it before release. There's so many parts that I could cite but I would end up writing a college thesis and im not trying to do that until im in my masters so to summarize, there's a part in the true ending where Jowy says something and there's no space in-between the words. I'm pretty sure it was "everyoneand". This happened multiple times throughout the game in story dialogue.
Something else I noticed throughout the game after being blown away with the Luca Blight boss from my previous play-through and falling in love with his theme is the use of his leit-motif throughout the game and how even though he died his legacy still lived on as the final boss since he summoned the beast rune.. Very cool. Another thing i went to go take a shit or something while i was dueling some guy and since i have wireless headphones i heard the second part of the duel theme and it goes so fucking hard i dont think anyone has been in a duel with a character in this game for more than 30 seconds so if you haven't listen to this https://youtu.be/CL50Xv0r2tA?si=8Dxjxq79VGts9c7M&t=54
.
.
.
.
.
.
Replayed to get all 108 stars of destiny and it was very worth it. I also did the bad ending again during this play-through and man it is so well done. I didn't give Nanami's character the respect she deserved before, because throughout the game I noticed how she was always at odds with herself and wanted to tell the main character to quit and just run away from the war. She occasionally threw around the idea but bottled it up until the Neclord segment where there was a whole segment and ending dedicated to it, both of which are extremely well done. On the topic of the true ending, for some reason I've seen a lot of controversy surrounding the true ending and if you're one of the people who hate it please play the game and try to make your takeaway something more than "they go to war"
That being said this game is somehow even more buggy than I remember from my first play-through and the translation is even WORSE with the true ending and I've come to the conclusion where I don't think anyone dared to proof read it before release. There's so many parts that I could cite but I would end up writing a college thesis and im not trying to do that until im in my masters so to summarize, there's a part in the true ending where Jowy says something and there's no space in-between the words. I'm pretty sure it was "everyoneand". This happened multiple times throughout the game in story dialogue.
Something else I noticed throughout the game after being blown away with the Luca Blight boss from my previous play-through and falling in love with his theme is the use of his leit-motif throughout the game and how even though he died his legacy still lived on as the final boss since he summoned the beast rune.. Very cool. Another thing i went to go take a shit or something while i was dueling some guy and since i have wireless headphones i heard the second part of the duel theme and it goes so fucking hard i dont think anyone has been in a duel with a character in this game for more than 30 seconds so if you haven't listen to this https://youtu.be/CL50Xv0r2tA?si=8Dxjxq79VGts9c7M&t=54