Xofi
3 reviews liked by Xofi
Like drinking a Mountain Dew Baja Blast, except it takes 80 hours and for the middle 50 you have to stop drinking and eat a shitload of dry crackers. Far too experiential to distill so I'll just give some qualia.
Good: Yuffie is still insanely fun to play, just like in Intergrade, and the combat stays interesting throughout. Queen's Blood (the card game minigame) is good enough that it almost single-handedly carried my interest through a lot of the game. Barret's voice acting, characterization, and story are deft, and by far the best narrative element in the game when they're not being undermined by unrestrained tonal shifts. Lots of other interesting little tidbits, and the overall narrative of the Remakes continues to be really fascinating.
Bad: A Mario Party-esque number of minigames and constant narrative asides and segments that should have been cut. An overwhelming number of unimaginative environments fill out the open world – have you ever seen a desert canyon? A rural plain? A jungle? A scrapyard city? Disneyland? Then you already know exactly what those environments will look like in FF7R2. I don't complain about technical issues like this from a place of "it should meet my standards for polish", but in a game where the devs clearly had very high standards for everything, the frequently jank-as-hell movement animations and straight-up bad lighting in many areas really stick out as casualties of a project whose chief concern is breadth over depth.
IMO, watch an LP of this game so you can skip frequently and passionately. Even beelining through the story there's just so much nothing I think it might genuinely not be worth it.
Good: Yuffie is still insanely fun to play, just like in Intergrade, and the combat stays interesting throughout. Queen's Blood (the card game minigame) is good enough that it almost single-handedly carried my interest through a lot of the game. Barret's voice acting, characterization, and story are deft, and by far the best narrative element in the game when they're not being undermined by unrestrained tonal shifts. Lots of other interesting little tidbits, and the overall narrative of the Remakes continues to be really fascinating.
Bad: A Mario Party-esque number of minigames and constant narrative asides and segments that should have been cut. An overwhelming number of unimaginative environments fill out the open world – have you ever seen a desert canyon? A rural plain? A jungle? A scrapyard city? Disneyland? Then you already know exactly what those environments will look like in FF7R2. I don't complain about technical issues like this from a place of "it should meet my standards for polish", but in a game where the devs clearly had very high standards for everything, the frequently jank-as-hell movement animations and straight-up bad lighting in many areas really stick out as casualties of a project whose chief concern is breadth over depth.
IMO, watch an LP of this game so you can skip frequently and passionately. Even beelining through the story there's just so much nothing I think it might genuinely not be worth it.
very, very charming. there's a lot that makes excited to play its sequel and to see how the devs built on this as a base and refined it.
judging kingmaker is so terribly difficult for me. i can see the charm and earnestness through the bars of the jank jail it's thrown me in. but i utterly despise its structure and what an awful blow its pacing takes from that. the amount of time i spent just hitting "skip day" was frankly ridiculous. i wish it didn't impact my enjoyment of the game as much as it did, but god, there were moments i hated the game.
i definitely don't hate it! but its particular flaws are ones i really struggle with. this is an insanely scrappy first attempt at a crpg this huge, and nothing in me could ever hate that.
the ways wrath of the righteous improved on the structure and storytelling is really impressive to me now that i've played both. no regrets in playing kingmaker, but hooo boy, if i replay, i'll be much less reluctant to use various mod features.
i definitely don't hate it! but its particular flaws are ones i really struggle with. this is an insanely scrappy first attempt at a crpg this huge, and nothing in me could ever hate that.
the ways wrath of the righteous improved on the structure and storytelling is really impressive to me now that i've played both. no regrets in playing kingmaker, but hooo boy, if i replay, i'll be much less reluctant to use various mod features.