A game that I respect more than I actually enjoy. I understand it's influence and I love some of the other content this universe has produced (Remake is incredible). But man this game has been completely decimated by the passage of time. Most of the time, when I play an seminal classic, I find that they've aged well and are fun even in the context of modern gaming (SOTN is an example of a game that came out the same year and hasn't aged a day), but FF7 is unfortunately an exception for me. The gameplay is too slow and easy, the movement feels awkward, the visuals and presentation are really unappealing (this is coming from someone who loves plenty of uglier games), and the UI and menus are simply awful.

Despite my mixed feelings on this game, it's very easy to see why it's such a beloved classic. The worldbuilding, story, music, variety, and characters are all good even today. While I think Square Enix's take on remaking this game has had an excellent start and much more ambitious than anyone could have imagined. I do hope that one day we get another take of this game that sticks closer to the original vision while smoothing out the rough edges I mentioned, since Remake is so fundamentally different from the original experience.

Borderlands 3 doesn’t seem so bad at first. It’s a bit like that small scab on your leg. You pay it little mind, pick it a little bit but for the most part everything is okay.

But as time goes on that scab gets worse and worse, and by the end of it you’re in the hospital having your whole leg amputated.

Maybe that’s a little extreme but I can’t think of a better way to sum up my feelings with this game. Though I need to make it clear, any positive opinions I had were strictly gameplay related. The movement, shooting, and skills feel amazing in this game. Guns are loud, have stylish animations, there’s a lot more variety to the randomization of guns too, with many more unique shapes and all that. You can vault up ledges now (fucking finally) and slide, which automatically makes every game better. Of course these mechanics will get kind of old as things go on. Sliding up to an enemy and blasting them in the face with a shotgun somehow does get old actually.

Borderlands 3 has the best iteration of the skill trees as well. Giving you three separate trees to focus on and level up, each tree is tied to unique ability the character has, so you don’t need to play around your ability as much as you have another to utilize.

It ends there though. Nothing else in this review will have any praise whatsoever.

Firstly, mission structure is still exactly the same as it was in borderlands 1. Go to place, fight generic enemies, listen to agonizing dialogue over the radio along the way. Repeat this a bazillion times on like 4 different planets using the same 3 guns you found on the second one since they’re legendary weapons that do boatloads of damage for no reason. Beat a boss fight effortlessly and open the vault to find blue and green rarity weapons, listen to EVEN more annoying dialogue as you attempt to do side quests or just drive around a little. It all just wears you down and eventually you start hating it, only playing to see the end. You’ll essentially hold yourself hostage thinking “yeah I think I’m getting close to the end” but it just keeps going, the storyline plot points get worse and worse, and the dialogue somehow manages to make you wince just a little bit more every time one of the goobers this game calls characters opens their stupid mouth.

If you lose the ability to read and hear, this game is probably amazing, but alas.. my superior brain makes this a miserable slog. Don’t play this unless you have 3 friends to play with you. Even then maybe don’t play this anyway, it’s not worth it.