2018
When Lea cries I cry
When I first played this game I dropped it after 20 minutes, because I had just finished a replay of FFX and was extremely put off by the drastic shift in tone and dramatic change in the returning characters' personalities. In 2021 I gave it another shot, approaching it as completely its own thing rather than comparing it too much to one of my favorite games of all time. And... I dropped it after 5 hours instead.
The change in tone is not inherently a problem, and it absolutely makes more sense for this game to be more light-hearted than its predecessor considering that the world has been freed from its spiral of death and misery. But the tone is not just "light-hearted", it's incredibly goofy, dumb, and absolutely loaded with cringe-worthy attempts at fanservice centered around Yuna and Rikku. A more light-hearted game set in a freed Spira is fine. Brother screaming in my ear about how he wants to see his cousin get half-naked and dance for his amusement is not fine.
The change in characters is also not inherently a problem. Yuna in particular has gone through a lot and it makes perfect sense for her to have grown and changed, and even become much more outgoing and confident. The big problem here is mostly that we did not actually see most of that change happen, only the catalyst and the endpoint. On top of that, with how fanservice-laden this game is, it's kind of hard to look at her personality shift entirely in a vacuum. How much of this was a logical progression for her character, and how much was a cynical excuse to put her in booty shorts and make her an idol?
Rikku on the other hand feels less like she evolved and more like she's been flanderized. She's always been the upbeat bubbly kind-of-annoying one, and even in FFX she had her moments of grating or cringey dialogue... but in this game it feels like all of her worst traits have been amplified at the expense of all the charm she had. I dreaded every line of her dialogue, and she has a LOT of dialogue. This was especially not helped by her "chemistry" and frequent exchanges with Brother, who was fine as a bit character in FFX but is insufferable as one of the main supporting cast in X-2.
The game overall feels like it's trying to be an ecchi comedy anime, which is not exactly a genre I'm fond of. From the new skimpy outfits, to the combat system relying on the main girls changing into different clothes, to the multiple idol dance sequences, to the constant awful attempts at humor, not a single thing that happened in this game endeared me to it.
As far as the actual gameplay... it's fine I guess. I've seen some people online sing it's praises as the "best ATB combat in the franchise", but as someone who's never been a huge fan of the ATB style in the first place I found it simultaneously way harder AND way more boring than the slower turn-based style of FFX. I'll try to explain why.
As for why it's harder: The fast pace of battle and ability for enemies to attack while you're in the middle of an action makes it extremely easy to lose control of a fight. Combined with the seemingly high damage that early-game monsters can dish out, unless you spend a while on early-game grinding it's really easy for opponents to down one or more of your party in a couple of moves. Items and healing magic are also substantially worse in this game compared to X because of the "charge time" they take, which effectively makes them cost 2 actions (and makes the caster incredibly vulnerable to being killed while trying to heal).
As for why it's more boring: because magic and most special moves take way longer to use than basic attacks (on top of costing mana), it rarely feels worth it to use them. I very quickly fell into a loop of simply basic attacking with two of my party members and healing with the third, every single round until the battle was over. This probably isn't actually the most optimal strategy for most fights, but it gets the job done well enough that I didn't see much reason to change it up. The fast pace of ATB battles discourages me from changing it up, because every second spent thinking about what would be better is lost DPS and increased incoming damage. There is a "pause" mode which is supposed to pause the ATB timer during menu selection, but it only pauses during the sub-menus which means you're still losing time if you need to go in and out of multiple menus to look at your options and think.
This is all exacerbated by the "dressphere" class and leveling system, which replaces the Sphere Grid from X. Leveling is a completely linear set of vague stat increases (not even communicated upon leveling up), and instead of having a large party with many specialists you instead have only 3 party members who can switch classes at will. Because switching classes takes an entire turn (as opposed to party switching being free in X) it doesn't make sense to switch frequently, and this in turn leads to less variety in strategy. On top of that, since all the classes level separately, if you at some point realize you need (or could really use) a class that you haven't been using, then you'll need to grind it up to a reasonable level before it's worthwhile. Even in my short time playing, this discouraged me from switching classes even further; I didn't want to spend time on tedious grinding, but I also didn't want to divide my XP between more than a few classes since this would hamper my progression. All in all, I found the progression system much less interesting and engaging than the Sphere Grid system.
From what I've read online, the "proper" way to play this game is to go everywhere and talk to everyone EXCEPT the stuff that will progress the story forward, including revisiting every single area in Spira during every single chapter, and completing dozens of barely-relevant minigames and side objectives. While I'm generally a fan of games with tons of optional content, apparently the "good" endings of the game are locked behind full completion, and based on the combat and progression systems I got the impression I was expected to do a lot of that extra content in order to decently level my classes and get good enough stats to win consistently against tough opponents. I really don't like the idea of tying the "good" ending of a game to MISSABLE side-quests - especially not early-game side-quests - and I think if that is the "intended" way to play the game then it should really be communicated somehow in-game. The few times I ventured off the path of the main story I was met with road blocks telling me to come back later, so I eventually just powered through Chapter 1 without going to most of the areas on the map. Learning afterwards that I was now locked out of the true ending was what made me put down the game for good.
As for the story... I can't comment on much since I dropped the game shortly after it seemed like the "real" story might be starting, but what I got was boring and felt completely pointless. And the music is fine, but it's a real step down from X in my opinion.
TL;DR: I really did not enjoy this game. I found the characters and tone insufferably dumb and annoying, I found the core combat and progression systems boring and unengaging, I found the story/mission structure unclear and frustrating, and I found myself annoyed by a world I normally love. I'm glad that some people love it, and I have no ill will towards those people, but I thought this was a terrible game, and I have no desire to play any more of it.
The change in tone is not inherently a problem, and it absolutely makes more sense for this game to be more light-hearted than its predecessor considering that the world has been freed from its spiral of death and misery. But the tone is not just "light-hearted", it's incredibly goofy, dumb, and absolutely loaded with cringe-worthy attempts at fanservice centered around Yuna and Rikku. A more light-hearted game set in a freed Spira is fine. Brother screaming in my ear about how he wants to see his cousin get half-naked and dance for his amusement is not fine.
The change in characters is also not inherently a problem. Yuna in particular has gone through a lot and it makes perfect sense for her to have grown and changed, and even become much more outgoing and confident. The big problem here is mostly that we did not actually see most of that change happen, only the catalyst and the endpoint. On top of that, with how fanservice-laden this game is, it's kind of hard to look at her personality shift entirely in a vacuum. How much of this was a logical progression for her character, and how much was a cynical excuse to put her in booty shorts and make her an idol?
Rikku on the other hand feels less like she evolved and more like she's been flanderized. She's always been the upbeat bubbly kind-of-annoying one, and even in FFX she had her moments of grating or cringey dialogue... but in this game it feels like all of her worst traits have been amplified at the expense of all the charm she had. I dreaded every line of her dialogue, and she has a LOT of dialogue. This was especially not helped by her "chemistry" and frequent exchanges with Brother, who was fine as a bit character in FFX but is insufferable as one of the main supporting cast in X-2.
The game overall feels like it's trying to be an ecchi comedy anime, which is not exactly a genre I'm fond of. From the new skimpy outfits, to the combat system relying on the main girls changing into different clothes, to the multiple idol dance sequences, to the constant awful attempts at humor, not a single thing that happened in this game endeared me to it.
As far as the actual gameplay... it's fine I guess. I've seen some people online sing it's praises as the "best ATB combat in the franchise", but as someone who's never been a huge fan of the ATB style in the first place I found it simultaneously way harder AND way more boring than the slower turn-based style of FFX. I'll try to explain why.
As for why it's harder: The fast pace of battle and ability for enemies to attack while you're in the middle of an action makes it extremely easy to lose control of a fight. Combined with the seemingly high damage that early-game monsters can dish out, unless you spend a while on early-game grinding it's really easy for opponents to down one or more of your party in a couple of moves. Items and healing magic are also substantially worse in this game compared to X because of the "charge time" they take, which effectively makes them cost 2 actions (and makes the caster incredibly vulnerable to being killed while trying to heal).
As for why it's more boring: because magic and most special moves take way longer to use than basic attacks (on top of costing mana), it rarely feels worth it to use them. I very quickly fell into a loop of simply basic attacking with two of my party members and healing with the third, every single round until the battle was over. This probably isn't actually the most optimal strategy for most fights, but it gets the job done well enough that I didn't see much reason to change it up. The fast pace of ATB battles discourages me from changing it up, because every second spent thinking about what would be better is lost DPS and increased incoming damage. There is a "pause" mode which is supposed to pause the ATB timer during menu selection, but it only pauses during the sub-menus which means you're still losing time if you need to go in and out of multiple menus to look at your options and think.
This is all exacerbated by the "dressphere" class and leveling system, which replaces the Sphere Grid from X. Leveling is a completely linear set of vague stat increases (not even communicated upon leveling up), and instead of having a large party with many specialists you instead have only 3 party members who can switch classes at will. Because switching classes takes an entire turn (as opposed to party switching being free in X) it doesn't make sense to switch frequently, and this in turn leads to less variety in strategy. On top of that, since all the classes level separately, if you at some point realize you need (or could really use) a class that you haven't been using, then you'll need to grind it up to a reasonable level before it's worthwhile. Even in my short time playing, this discouraged me from switching classes even further; I didn't want to spend time on tedious grinding, but I also didn't want to divide my XP between more than a few classes since this would hamper my progression. All in all, I found the progression system much less interesting and engaging than the Sphere Grid system.
From what I've read online, the "proper" way to play this game is to go everywhere and talk to everyone EXCEPT the stuff that will progress the story forward, including revisiting every single area in Spira during every single chapter, and completing dozens of barely-relevant minigames and side objectives. While I'm generally a fan of games with tons of optional content, apparently the "good" endings of the game are locked behind full completion, and based on the combat and progression systems I got the impression I was expected to do a lot of that extra content in order to decently level my classes and get good enough stats to win consistently against tough opponents. I really don't like the idea of tying the "good" ending of a game to MISSABLE side-quests - especially not early-game side-quests - and I think if that is the "intended" way to play the game then it should really be communicated somehow in-game. The few times I ventured off the path of the main story I was met with road blocks telling me to come back later, so I eventually just powered through Chapter 1 without going to most of the areas on the map. Learning afterwards that I was now locked out of the true ending was what made me put down the game for good.
As for the story... I can't comment on much since I dropped the game shortly after it seemed like the "real" story might be starting, but what I got was boring and felt completely pointless. And the music is fine, but it's a real step down from X in my opinion.
TL;DR: I really did not enjoy this game. I found the characters and tone insufferably dumb and annoying, I found the core combat and progression systems boring and unengaging, I found the story/mission structure unclear and frustrating, and I found myself annoyed by a world I normally love. I'm glad that some people love it, and I have no ill will towards those people, but I thought this was a terrible game, and I have no desire to play any more of it.
2000
After the first 15 hours of this game I was really ready for it to take a decisive spot as one of my favorites, but the whole late-game sequence kinda dragged and I felt like I needed to drag myself through the final dungeon to finally finish. I devoured the first three-quarters of the game in like a week or two, and then let it sit around unfinished for over a month because I lost excitement.
The main party is extremely strong, with Freya, Eiko, and Vivi being particular stand-outs. Nearly every character has a clear identity and their own story/motivation/character arc, although some get way more focus than others. This is obviously a major strength of the game and something that instantly puts it in a high tier among RPGs IMO, but it also becomes somewhat of a weakness as the game progresses. By the time you get to the "end game" - i.e. the second half of Disc 3 and on - most of the party has either finished their arc (e.g. Vivi and Steiner) or fades into the background as the main plot takes over all the screen time (e.g. Freya and Amarant). The last 8 hours or so of the game becomes The Zidane Show almost exclusively, so if he's not your favorite character in the party you might start to lose interest... or at least I did.
Speaking of the late game, I started to feel increasingly pigeonholed into continuing to use the same party of 4 as I progressed. XP and AP are not given to party members on the bench, even when the story prevents you from using them, and there is no easy way to switch party members for basically the entire game. By the time I was in the final dungeon a few of my neglected party members were 20-30 levels behind my main group, and similarly far behind in terms of learning abilities. Even if I brought them along to difficult fights to quickly get XP they would still end up way behind in AP without some serious grinding, which I was not willing to do. This isn't a huge deal in terms of beating the game since practically any configuration of 4 will do fine if they're appropriately leveled, but it was disappointing and felt somewhat incongruous with the story to leave half of the party in the dust like that. Compare to FFX which heavily encourages using every party member equally and allows switching freely even mid-battle, FFVI which forces you to use more than one full party at several points and gives free levels to characters that get locked out of your party for story reasons, and FFXIII which simply gives equal XP to benched characters.
I avoided doing most of the optional content in the game, largely because when I looked up what there was to do it all seemed extremely tedious. Much of the best gear is locked behind various chocobo treasure hunt minigames which were barely acknowledged or explained in-game, and which I was way behind on by the time I looked into sidequests on Disc 4. Beyond that there's a few quests with missable steps, a few quests based on getting specific random encounters, Blue Magic collection which is even more of a pain in this game than it usually is, a bunch of synthesis gear that requires specific drops and an insane amount of gil, and a superboss that expects you to be Level 99 with all abilities unlocked and best-in-slot gear. I know this kind of content exists to appeal to people who want to play the game for as long as possible, but a lot of it just sounded particularly time-wasting and not fun, especially with how slow the combat moves.
Despite all of my issues with the endgame though, my first ~30 hours were thoroughly enjoyable and worth playing through. I fell in love with many of the characters and loved seeing all their interactions. I loved how the party would split up in each town and have their own little adventures on the side. I loved the whole Black Mage plot thread. I loved the more cartoonish artstyle and light-hearted tone. And the combat was very enjoyable too despite how much it got slowed down by animations - it was fairly easy and easily broken but that seems to be the norm for FF games. Overall this was an incredibly solid game, and one I would recommend to any fan of the series.
The main party is extremely strong, with Freya, Eiko, and Vivi being particular stand-outs. Nearly every character has a clear identity and their own story/motivation/character arc, although some get way more focus than others. This is obviously a major strength of the game and something that instantly puts it in a high tier among RPGs IMO, but it also becomes somewhat of a weakness as the game progresses. By the time you get to the "end game" - i.e. the second half of Disc 3 and on - most of the party has either finished their arc (e.g. Vivi and Steiner) or fades into the background as the main plot takes over all the screen time (e.g. Freya and Amarant). The last 8 hours or so of the game becomes The Zidane Show almost exclusively, so if he's not your favorite character in the party you might start to lose interest... or at least I did.
Speaking of the late game, I started to feel increasingly pigeonholed into continuing to use the same party of 4 as I progressed. XP and AP are not given to party members on the bench, even when the story prevents you from using them, and there is no easy way to switch party members for basically the entire game. By the time I was in the final dungeon a few of my neglected party members were 20-30 levels behind my main group, and similarly far behind in terms of learning abilities. Even if I brought them along to difficult fights to quickly get XP they would still end up way behind in AP without some serious grinding, which I was not willing to do. This isn't a huge deal in terms of beating the game since practically any configuration of 4 will do fine if they're appropriately leveled, but it was disappointing and felt somewhat incongruous with the story to leave half of the party in the dust like that. Compare to FFX which heavily encourages using every party member equally and allows switching freely even mid-battle, FFVI which forces you to use more than one full party at several points and gives free levels to characters that get locked out of your party for story reasons, and FFXIII which simply gives equal XP to benched characters.
I avoided doing most of the optional content in the game, largely because when I looked up what there was to do it all seemed extremely tedious. Much of the best gear is locked behind various chocobo treasure hunt minigames which were barely acknowledged or explained in-game, and which I was way behind on by the time I looked into sidequests on Disc 4. Beyond that there's a few quests with missable steps, a few quests based on getting specific random encounters, Blue Magic collection which is even more of a pain in this game than it usually is, a bunch of synthesis gear that requires specific drops and an insane amount of gil, and a superboss that expects you to be Level 99 with all abilities unlocked and best-in-slot gear. I know this kind of content exists to appeal to people who want to play the game for as long as possible, but a lot of it just sounded particularly time-wasting and not fun, especially with how slow the combat moves.
Despite all of my issues with the endgame though, my first ~30 hours were thoroughly enjoyable and worth playing through. I fell in love with many of the characters and loved seeing all their interactions. I loved how the party would split up in each town and have their own little adventures on the side. I loved the whole Black Mage plot thread. I loved the more cartoonish artstyle and light-hearted tone. And the combat was very enjoyable too despite how much it got slowed down by animations - it was fairly easy and easily broken but that seems to be the norm for FF games. Overall this was an incredibly solid game, and one I would recommend to any fan of the series.
2018
A funny idea that wayyy overstays its welcome.
I went into this fully expecting it to be a 30-minute game consisting of running around recruiting everyone, and then a single fight with the Dark Lord. I was very wrong. This is a full-blown RPG with dozens of fights and an extremely over-complicated combat system. This game has dozens of elemental types, dozens of status effects, and unique combo moves between dozens of pairs of characters. A lot of effort is made to make different fights unique with restricting your party size, or giving debuffs to certain characters, etc., but overall the combat just feels so bloated and it quickly becomes a slog to get through. Scrolling through literally 99 characters to find the one guy who can grant Manasteal gets old really fast.
Beyond that, for a "comedy RPG" it's not very funny at all. Most of the dialogue is entirely serious, and when they do start cracking jokes they just aren't very funny. The main gimmick is funny in concept but that's pretty much the extent of the comedy. And while some of the characters look pretty decent, it seems very apparent that most of them were created randomly through something akin to Picrew.
I got to encounter 40 or so before giving up. I have no idea how close I was to the end. There's an option to skip battles but it felt pointless to just skip through the whole game without playing any of it. I wouldn't recommend playing this. The music is pretty decent though.
I went into this fully expecting it to be a 30-minute game consisting of running around recruiting everyone, and then a single fight with the Dark Lord. I was very wrong. This is a full-blown RPG with dozens of fights and an extremely over-complicated combat system. This game has dozens of elemental types, dozens of status effects, and unique combo moves between dozens of pairs of characters. A lot of effort is made to make different fights unique with restricting your party size, or giving debuffs to certain characters, etc., but overall the combat just feels so bloated and it quickly becomes a slog to get through. Scrolling through literally 99 characters to find the one guy who can grant Manasteal gets old really fast.
Beyond that, for a "comedy RPG" it's not very funny at all. Most of the dialogue is entirely serious, and when they do start cracking jokes they just aren't very funny. The main gimmick is funny in concept but that's pretty much the extent of the comedy. And while some of the characters look pretty decent, it seems very apparent that most of them were created randomly through something akin to Picrew.
I got to encounter 40 or so before giving up. I have no idea how close I was to the end. There's an option to skip battles but it felt pointless to just skip through the whole game without playing any of it. I wouldn't recommend playing this. The music is pretty decent though.
Probably the worst tie-in anime fighter I've ever played. The combat is jank, the health bars are way too long, and it looks like total ass, which is all par for the course. What really sucks is that it doesn't seem capture anything about the characters that would make them fun in a fighter.
I only played exactly one match of Rukia vs. Ulquiorra but each character seemed to have practically no moves, and the ones they did have were underwhelming and somewhat random. Rukia doesn't even get to be a Shinigami at all until she uses her super, and Ulquiorra's moveset had nothing to do with his canonical abilites. He doesn't use a sword, he doesn't fire Ceros, he doesn't use Resurreccion, he doesn't even seem particularly fast. Instead he teleports and creates black holes, something he never does in canon.
I looked through a move list of all the characters and while it seems like Ulquiorra got a worse deal than most others (probably due to his abilities not being shown much before the game came out), it's still absolutely tragic that the characters have such a limited move pool and so much of it is eaten up by generic melee attacks. And while Ulquiorra might be one of the worst characters compared to his representation in the manga/anime, he's far from the only character in this game that had shown barely any of their actual abilities by the time this game was made. Rather than trying to include a bunch of characters from an at-the-time brand-new arc, they really should have waited until they had any idea what these new characters actually did.
Compared to the contemporary Naruto, One Piece, and DBZ fighting games this is a real disappointment and I can see why this series of games never continued.
I only played exactly one match of Rukia vs. Ulquiorra but each character seemed to have practically no moves, and the ones they did have were underwhelming and somewhat random. Rukia doesn't even get to be a Shinigami at all until she uses her super, and Ulquiorra's moveset had nothing to do with his canonical abilites. He doesn't use a sword, he doesn't fire Ceros, he doesn't use Resurreccion, he doesn't even seem particularly fast. Instead he teleports and creates black holes, something he never does in canon.
I looked through a move list of all the characters and while it seems like Ulquiorra got a worse deal than most others (probably due to his abilities not being shown much before the game came out), it's still absolutely tragic that the characters have such a limited move pool and so much of it is eaten up by generic melee attacks. And while Ulquiorra might be one of the worst characters compared to his representation in the manga/anime, he's far from the only character in this game that had shown barely any of their actual abilities by the time this game was made. Rather than trying to include a bunch of characters from an at-the-time brand-new arc, they really should have waited until they had any idea what these new characters actually did.
Compared to the contemporary Naruto, One Piece, and DBZ fighting games this is a real disappointment and I can see why this series of games never continued.
1994
Very, very good old-school JRPG. Held back somewhat by the limitations and standards of the time (most notably a lot of vague directions and unclear ability descriptions) and the story isn't groundbreaking or anything, but it's fun and engaging all the way through - and most surprisingly to me, it's pretty funny as well. One of the best Final Fantasy games.
1987
This is a review of the PS1 version.
Short version: The game starts out pretty fun, but becomes a slog in the late game. Spells rarely feel worth it to cast making martial characters way stronger than casters, and the insane number of random encounters gets pretty monotonous when they stop being any kind of threat.
Long Version:
The early game was pretty enjoyable. I picked Warrior/Monk/White Mage/Black Mage to have a nice spread, and while the Warrior very clearly outclassed the others at the start I could feel the Monk slowly getting more and more powerful, and the White Mage was valuable just for some extra healing. Black Mage seemed super weak, but I expected them to catch up and overtake the "martials" in the late-game, similar to how D&D class progression works.
The early dungeons were actually really threatening, and with the extremely limited availability of spell-based healing and AoE damage (due to the Spell Slot system) I was forced to think a lot about resource management in order to save enough juice for the bosses. There are a lot of random encounters in these dungeons (and the overworld), and a lot of the random enemies can be pretty threatening, but it was just the right level of difficulty that it was fun to manage my resources and pull through by the skin of my teeth. By the mid-game I felt like I was getting into a nice groove. The Mages started getting enough slots to be a little more consistent, and the higher-level damage spells start to actually be worth using more often... at least, sometimes.
One big problem with magic in this game is that the damage is insanely inconsistent, with higher-level spells having huge ranges of possible damage like 50-200 or 60-240. When most enemies have 200-300 health and the martials are easily dealing 200-300 damage per attack, that's the difference between good damage and a completely wasted turn + spell slot. This is made even worse in the late game when every enemy seems to start resisting magic, meaning even a 6th or 7th level spell often does only 40-ish damage to each enemy.
As I got further into the game, magic just felt more and more worthless. On top of the damage issues above, most spells also just got completely overshadowed by the introduction of a suite of items that can be used to cast a given spell for free, infinitely. Why would I ever bother using one of my 3 high-level spell slots on a big AoE spell that deals ~50 damage to all enemies, when I can infinitely use the Gauntlet/Mage Staff/Black Robe to deal ~40 damage instead? Why would I ever bother to cast healing spells when I can spam Healing Staff/Healing Helm every turn to keep my whole party at full health forever? Why do I have spells like Invis2 if I can just use them for free through items? Considering any class can use these items, it really started to feel like there was no point in having dedicated magic-using classes at all.
The only way that the Mages actually pulled their weight was through the handful of support spells that can't be replicated through items, and by the White Mage being able to clutch heal or revive during boss fights. While it's better than nothing, it's really sad in my opinion to have your Black Mage - usually depicted as an unstoppable force of raw magical power - reduced to nothing more than spamming low-level buff spells like Haste and Temper on your martial characters. I feel like I really understand why people say the optimal party composition is 3 Warriors/Monks and a single Red Mage - low-level buff spells and the occasional heal is all I really needed dedicated casters for in the end.
If the spell items were more limited, or spell slots were more abundant, or spells simply did more damage/healing per cast, then this wouldn't be nearly as pronounced. But with everything the way it is, having a dedicated White/Black Mage in the party feels like nerfing yourself for most of the game.
Beyond the issues with spellcasters, the game is decent but unremarkable by modern standards. The overabundance of random encounters gets really grating in the late game especially since they cease to pose any sort of challenge once you get the infinite-healing items and high-level gear. Battle animations take so long that even a trivial random encounter in the late game can take a minute or more, and you get dozens of them per-floor in all of the huge late-game dungeons. I started turning up the emulation speed by the final dungeon.
After all of those trivial encounters, the final boss was a huge shift in difficulty. He has a number of moves that did tons of damage to the whole party (some of which didn't even seem to be included in the Fire/Ice/Lightning element wheel that I have Null spells to counteract), can Haste himself but can't be Slowed to counteract it, and can fully heal himself whenever he wants. It feels like a battle against RNG more than anything else - if he doesn't Haste early and doesn't Curaja before you can kill him, GG; if he Hastes early and spams Curaja then you're completely fucked. Until I looked online and realized that buff spells stack (allowing the cheesy strategy of stacking Attack-up spells on your Warrior and dealing silly amounts of damage) I didn't think I would be able to beat him despite finding everything before him so easy it was boring.
And as far as story goes... practically all of the story content is just in the scrolling text after beating the final boss, and it gets extremely convoluted extremely quickly. Partially as a consequence of introducing complicated elements last-minute and partially because barely any time or word-count is put into explaining what the hell happened. It's a little more ambitious than I was actually expecting, but it wasn't great.
Anyway, to sum up: The game was pretty fun early on but became a slog in the late-game, and the class balance is so fucked up it's ridiculous. I'm glad I got through it because it's interesting in a historical context, but as an actual game it's not very enjoyable. 4/10, would not recommend unless you're specifically interested in Final Fantasy or old RPGs in general.
Short version: The game starts out pretty fun, but becomes a slog in the late game. Spells rarely feel worth it to cast making martial characters way stronger than casters, and the insane number of random encounters gets pretty monotonous when they stop being any kind of threat.
Long Version:
The early game was pretty enjoyable. I picked Warrior/Monk/White Mage/Black Mage to have a nice spread, and while the Warrior very clearly outclassed the others at the start I could feel the Monk slowly getting more and more powerful, and the White Mage was valuable just for some extra healing. Black Mage seemed super weak, but I expected them to catch up and overtake the "martials" in the late-game, similar to how D&D class progression works.
The early dungeons were actually really threatening, and with the extremely limited availability of spell-based healing and AoE damage (due to the Spell Slot system) I was forced to think a lot about resource management in order to save enough juice for the bosses. There are a lot of random encounters in these dungeons (and the overworld), and a lot of the random enemies can be pretty threatening, but it was just the right level of difficulty that it was fun to manage my resources and pull through by the skin of my teeth. By the mid-game I felt like I was getting into a nice groove. The Mages started getting enough slots to be a little more consistent, and the higher-level damage spells start to actually be worth using more often... at least, sometimes.
One big problem with magic in this game is that the damage is insanely inconsistent, with higher-level spells having huge ranges of possible damage like 50-200 or 60-240. When most enemies have 200-300 health and the martials are easily dealing 200-300 damage per attack, that's the difference between good damage and a completely wasted turn + spell slot. This is made even worse in the late game when every enemy seems to start resisting magic, meaning even a 6th or 7th level spell often does only 40-ish damage to each enemy.
As I got further into the game, magic just felt more and more worthless. On top of the damage issues above, most spells also just got completely overshadowed by the introduction of a suite of items that can be used to cast a given spell for free, infinitely. Why would I ever bother using one of my 3 high-level spell slots on a big AoE spell that deals ~50 damage to all enemies, when I can infinitely use the Gauntlet/Mage Staff/Black Robe to deal ~40 damage instead? Why would I ever bother to cast healing spells when I can spam Healing Staff/Healing Helm every turn to keep my whole party at full health forever? Why do I have spells like Invis2 if I can just use them for free through items? Considering any class can use these items, it really started to feel like there was no point in having dedicated magic-using classes at all.
The only way that the Mages actually pulled their weight was through the handful of support spells that can't be replicated through items, and by the White Mage being able to clutch heal or revive during boss fights. While it's better than nothing, it's really sad in my opinion to have your Black Mage - usually depicted as an unstoppable force of raw magical power - reduced to nothing more than spamming low-level buff spells like Haste and Temper on your martial characters. I feel like I really understand why people say the optimal party composition is 3 Warriors/Monks and a single Red Mage - low-level buff spells and the occasional heal is all I really needed dedicated casters for in the end.
If the spell items were more limited, or spell slots were more abundant, or spells simply did more damage/healing per cast, then this wouldn't be nearly as pronounced. But with everything the way it is, having a dedicated White/Black Mage in the party feels like nerfing yourself for most of the game.
Beyond the issues with spellcasters, the game is decent but unremarkable by modern standards. The overabundance of random encounters gets really grating in the late game especially since they cease to pose any sort of challenge once you get the infinite-healing items and high-level gear. Battle animations take so long that even a trivial random encounter in the late game can take a minute or more, and you get dozens of them per-floor in all of the huge late-game dungeons. I started turning up the emulation speed by the final dungeon.
After all of those trivial encounters, the final boss was a huge shift in difficulty. He has a number of moves that did tons of damage to the whole party (some of which didn't even seem to be included in the Fire/Ice/Lightning element wheel that I have Null spells to counteract), can Haste himself but can't be Slowed to counteract it, and can fully heal himself whenever he wants. It feels like a battle against RNG more than anything else - if he doesn't Haste early and doesn't Curaja before you can kill him, GG; if he Hastes early and spams Curaja then you're completely fucked. Until I looked online and realized that buff spells stack (allowing the cheesy strategy of stacking Attack-up spells on your Warrior and dealing silly amounts of damage) I didn't think I would be able to beat him despite finding everything before him so easy it was boring.
And as far as story goes... practically all of the story content is just in the scrolling text after beating the final boss, and it gets extremely convoluted extremely quickly. Partially as a consequence of introducing complicated elements last-minute and partially because barely any time or word-count is put into explaining what the hell happened. It's a little more ambitious than I was actually expecting, but it wasn't great.
Anyway, to sum up: The game was pretty fun early on but became a slog in the late-game, and the class balance is so fucked up it's ridiculous. I'm glad I got through it because it's interesting in a historical context, but as an actual game it's not very enjoyable. 4/10, would not recommend unless you're specifically interested in Final Fantasy or old RPGs in general.
2009
An extremely unpolished title with some cool ideas.
The most common complaints about FFXIII that I've seen are that it's too linear and the combat sucks ("auto battle bad"). I didn't think either of these problems were all that bad. The game is extremely linear except for a brief moment in the middle, but this isn't inherently an issue. FFX is also extremely linear and it's fine. If it weren't for the issues I'll get to later then I don't think most people would've minded as much.
The combat is pretty good too, once you actually unlock all of its functionality (which takes way longer than necessary). It's essentially an ATB system like the older games, but the ATB bar fills SO fast that it's impractical to manually choose specific inputs all the time. Instead of choosing inputs your focus is on choosing paradigms, and in harder fights you will likely need to paradigm shift constantly to fight at peak efficiency. Instead of telling someone to cast Cure, you switch to a paradigm that has a Medic. The result is similar but it allows for more fast-paced battles.
My main issues are with the writing. At the start of the game Snow and Sazh are pretty boring characters, and Hope and Vanille are downright obnoxious. The worst two get a little better as the story goes, but overall I didn't feel like any of the characters really developed all that much. Their relationships with each other are also pretty static - there's some pairings with relationships that are established early, but they don't really develop past this and as a result they never really start feeling like a proper "squad" of people who all have each other's backs. Sazh is the worst offender of this, having virtually no connection to anyone else except for Vanille (and even that gets mostly dropped in the late game), but there are a few other pairings that have barely any direct interactions with each other.
Besides the character writing, the plot was also extremely messy and confusingly told. After the first act of constantly running away, the plot starts to seriously meander, and there were several moments where I felt unclear what exactly the party's short-term objectives were or why we were doing what we were doing. Meanwhile the main villain seems to always say that whatever the party happens to be doing at the moment is exactly what he planned for them to do which starts to feel pretty silly, and in the final moments of the game the day is saved by a completely unexplained deus ex machina.
Much of the plot hinges on saving the floating city of Cocoon, and much of the characters' motivations are wrapped up in their emotional connection to this goal. The problem with this is that I don't feel like I as a player was given much reason to give a shit about Cocoon. You're barely given any screen time with the main characters' loved ones, and you never have any interactions with the general populace outside of them running terrified or trying to kill you. Because of the in-media-res start of the story you never get much of a chance to experience what "normal" life in Cocoon is like, so you can't really miss it.
Despite my earlier saying that the linearity is not inherently an issue, it's true that the game is essentially a series of monster-filled hallways. There is a "stealth" system that allows you to avoid or ambush enemies in theory, but in practice something like 80-90% of the enemies in required areas are directly in the middle of the path and stare straight at you as you approach. There's also no way to run from battles. This means that no matter what you are going to fight a LOT of battles, and for the number of them they individually tend to take a long time especially in the late game. Fighting random encounters all the time in a game like FFX is fine because most of them can be resolved in seconds, and the ones that can't can be fled from. In FFXIII plenty of trash mob encounters take several minutes to complete with no option of running or avoiding them. The length of battles combined with the complete lack of proper "towns" or any similar resting spot makes the whole game kind of blur together into an indistinguishable mess of monster-filled hallways.
There is a single brief moment in the mid-game where it opens up dramatically, with side-quests and fast travel unlocks and everything. This would be a welcome change in theory, but in practice the open map and its many respawning enemies is an absolute chore to traverse, not helped by the paltry number of fast travel points, the clunkiness of using them, and the frankly nauseating camera which is often difficult to corral.
Anyway, it's overall pretty mediocre as far as JRPGs go. Decent combat mechanics are tainted somewhat by an over-abundance of overly-tanky trash mobs, and a cool world is somewhat wasted on a trite and hard-to-follow story.
The most common complaints about FFXIII that I've seen are that it's too linear and the combat sucks ("auto battle bad"). I didn't think either of these problems were all that bad. The game is extremely linear except for a brief moment in the middle, but this isn't inherently an issue. FFX is also extremely linear and it's fine. If it weren't for the issues I'll get to later then I don't think most people would've minded as much.
The combat is pretty good too, once you actually unlock all of its functionality (which takes way longer than necessary). It's essentially an ATB system like the older games, but the ATB bar fills SO fast that it's impractical to manually choose specific inputs all the time. Instead of choosing inputs your focus is on choosing paradigms, and in harder fights you will likely need to paradigm shift constantly to fight at peak efficiency. Instead of telling someone to cast Cure, you switch to a paradigm that has a Medic. The result is similar but it allows for more fast-paced battles.
My main issues are with the writing. At the start of the game Snow and Sazh are pretty boring characters, and Hope and Vanille are downright obnoxious. The worst two get a little better as the story goes, but overall I didn't feel like any of the characters really developed all that much. Their relationships with each other are also pretty static - there's some pairings with relationships that are established early, but they don't really develop past this and as a result they never really start feeling like a proper "squad" of people who all have each other's backs. Sazh is the worst offender of this, having virtually no connection to anyone else except for Vanille (and even that gets mostly dropped in the late game), but there are a few other pairings that have barely any direct interactions with each other.
Besides the character writing, the plot was also extremely messy and confusingly told. After the first act of constantly running away, the plot starts to seriously meander, and there were several moments where I felt unclear what exactly the party's short-term objectives were or why we were doing what we were doing. Meanwhile the main villain seems to always say that whatever the party happens to be doing at the moment is exactly what he planned for them to do which starts to feel pretty silly, and in the final moments of the game the day is saved by a completely unexplained deus ex machina.
Much of the plot hinges on saving the floating city of Cocoon, and much of the characters' motivations are wrapped up in their emotional connection to this goal. The problem with this is that I don't feel like I as a player was given much reason to give a shit about Cocoon. You're barely given any screen time with the main characters' loved ones, and you never have any interactions with the general populace outside of them running terrified or trying to kill you. Because of the in-media-res start of the story you never get much of a chance to experience what "normal" life in Cocoon is like, so you can't really miss it.
Despite my earlier saying that the linearity is not inherently an issue, it's true that the game is essentially a series of monster-filled hallways. There is a "stealth" system that allows you to avoid or ambush enemies in theory, but in practice something like 80-90% of the enemies in required areas are directly in the middle of the path and stare straight at you as you approach. There's also no way to run from battles. This means that no matter what you are going to fight a LOT of battles, and for the number of them they individually tend to take a long time especially in the late game. Fighting random encounters all the time in a game like FFX is fine because most of them can be resolved in seconds, and the ones that can't can be fled from. In FFXIII plenty of trash mob encounters take several minutes to complete with no option of running or avoiding them. The length of battles combined with the complete lack of proper "towns" or any similar resting spot makes the whole game kind of blur together into an indistinguishable mess of monster-filled hallways.
There is a single brief moment in the mid-game where it opens up dramatically, with side-quests and fast travel unlocks and everything. This would be a welcome change in theory, but in practice the open map and its many respawning enemies is an absolute chore to traverse, not helped by the paltry number of fast travel points, the clunkiness of using them, and the frankly nauseating camera which is often difficult to corral.
Anyway, it's overall pretty mediocre as far as JRPGs go. Decent combat mechanics are tainted somewhat by an over-abundance of overly-tanky trash mobs, and a cool world is somewhat wasted on a trite and hard-to-follow story.
2020
A surprisingly good open-world action-RPG tied to a godawful gacha system and live-service time-gating.
It's entirely possible (and not even difficult) to ignore the gacha element completely and just enjoy Genshin as a single-player action-RPG. Playing the gacha doesn't really get you anything except for waifus and bragging rights - there's no PvP and nothing is difficulty-gated behind overpowered paid equipment.
Personally, I play this game as if it was a single-player RPG, and only roll on the gacha when I've amassed a wealth of free rolls and I'm particularly interested in a given character (which is rare). I'm perfectly happy to play through the entire length of this game with the handful of 4-stars I got randomly with my first few rolls.
Are there problems with the game? Absolutely. The gacha, if you choose to engage with it, is laughably unforgiving. It's absurdly expensive to guarantee you get what you want - and even worse if you care about Constellations. The only saving grace of the gacha system is that it's completely unnecessary to enjoy the game.
Also, because it's a live-service game there is only so much content available at a given time. Events are limited-time and extremely missable, and if you get to the end of the story you'll likely be waiting several months to see more. The latter issue is easily mitigated by taking breaks during content droughts, but it's definitely a point against the game as a cohesive story.
The grind in this game is brutal as well. Getting enough materials to level your characters is excruciating sometimes, and if you want to optimize any of them then you're up against the quintuple-layered RNG hellscape that is artifact grinding. Combined with a mobile-game energy system, it can take literal months to get good artifacts for even one character.
All that said, it might seem strange that I've given the game an 8/10. Put simply, the game allows me to ignore almost everything about it that I don't like. I can comfortably play through the story without ever rolling the gacha, taking breaks when I run out of story and only grinding out the bare minimum to level up one team and give them sub-optimal gear. When played in this way, I think Genshin is a genuinely fun game with a surprisingly compelling story, endless lore, and absolutely gorgeous visuals and music. It would be better as a $60 completed single-player game with no gacha element, but it wouldn't have made billions of dollars in that format.
It's entirely possible (and not even difficult) to ignore the gacha element completely and just enjoy Genshin as a single-player action-RPG. Playing the gacha doesn't really get you anything except for waifus and bragging rights - there's no PvP and nothing is difficulty-gated behind overpowered paid equipment.
Personally, I play this game as if it was a single-player RPG, and only roll on the gacha when I've amassed a wealth of free rolls and I'm particularly interested in a given character (which is rare). I'm perfectly happy to play through the entire length of this game with the handful of 4-stars I got randomly with my first few rolls.
Are there problems with the game? Absolutely. The gacha, if you choose to engage with it, is laughably unforgiving. It's absurdly expensive to guarantee you get what you want - and even worse if you care about Constellations. The only saving grace of the gacha system is that it's completely unnecessary to enjoy the game.
Also, because it's a live-service game there is only so much content available at a given time. Events are limited-time and extremely missable, and if you get to the end of the story you'll likely be waiting several months to see more. The latter issue is easily mitigated by taking breaks during content droughts, but it's definitely a point against the game as a cohesive story.
The grind in this game is brutal as well. Getting enough materials to level your characters is excruciating sometimes, and if you want to optimize any of them then you're up against the quintuple-layered RNG hellscape that is artifact grinding. Combined with a mobile-game energy system, it can take literal months to get good artifacts for even one character.
All that said, it might seem strange that I've given the game an 8/10. Put simply, the game allows me to ignore almost everything about it that I don't like. I can comfortably play through the story without ever rolling the gacha, taking breaks when I run out of story and only grinding out the bare minimum to level up one team and give them sub-optimal gear. When played in this way, I think Genshin is a genuinely fun game with a surprisingly compelling story, endless lore, and absolutely gorgeous visuals and music. It would be better as a $60 completed single-player game with no gacha element, but it wouldn't have made billions of dollars in that format.
Can't have shit in Ishgard
2022
It sure is Overwatch. As someone who played a lot of OW1 around launch and then fell off hard, it barely feels any different at all. But Overwatch is a pretty fun game at the end of the day, so hey.
This review contains spoilers
TL;DR: I really liked this game for the first ~90% of its runtime, but the cracks in the combat system and sheer amount of filler really started to show near the end. On top of that, the story really felt like it drove off of a cliff at the very end. Full spoilers ahead, and I want to say up-front that I HAVE NOT PLAYED THE ORIGINAL GAME, and so will largely not be comparing the two.
I'll start with the issues I had with the combat. Although for most of the game it was pretty enjoyable, as the game progressed and tried to increase the challenge it started to feel increasingly frustrating and unfair. This is an Action RPG unlike the original game. In my opinion as a fan of action games such as Kingdom Hearts, Bloodborne, and various MetroidVania games, in a good action game it should be possible to get through an entire fight without taking any damage, at least in boss fights. It certainly doesn't need to be easy, but having virtually every instance of damage be preventable is a big factor in making difficult action combat feel "fair". FF7R does not appear to feel the same way. There are tons of bosses with unavoidable or near-unavoidable moves which you are expected to block, and the dodge roll is near-useless in most scenarios since it seems to have no i-frames whatsoever.
Now, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. The game wants to encourage blocking more than dodging - fine. It's a remake of a turn-based RPG where taking damage in each battle is unavoidable. The real problem with this design philosophy is that blocking is also a bad idea a lot of the time. Late-game bosses tend to be loaded with unblockable moves, which you can't really dodge either due to your lack of i-frames and their enormous hitboxes. On top of this many late-game bosses almost never stagger at all when they're hit, so you can't interrupt these moves, and your attacks have so much start-up and end-lag that it's impossible to block in time when you see them start to wind up a move while you're attacking. This latter issue is most pronounced against the Whisper bosses at the very end. So you can't dodge effectively, you can't block effectively, you can't stagger them by staying on offense... there's not a whole lot it feels like you can do to effectively mitigate damage. This isn't helped by how easy it is to get knocked out of your healing animation, taking more damage while also wasting resources.
Theoretically, I figure the intended way to open up enemies for damage is to Stagger them. While this sounds good on paper, you need to put enemies into a "pressured" state in order to stagger them most of the time, and it seemed almost random when this would happen for many late-game fights. Sometimes a certain move would cause it, sometimes not. Without any way to know how to cause this state, I felt like I was simply waiting for the game to decide I was allowed to stagger bosses. At least once they're staggered I can get good damage in, right? Well...
Another problem with bosses in this game is how often they pull you out of combat to watch a mini-cutscene. Each boss seems to have a ton of mini-phases tied to their health percentage; in theory this is a great way to spice up long fights, but because each new "phase" immediately takes them out of Stagger and forces you to watch a 10-second cinematic, it actually just prevents you from doing more than a relatively miniscule amount of damage during the boss's damage phases. Not only does this completely invalidate any kind of DPS-maximizing strategy, it also breaks any sense of flow you might've had by resetting the battlefield and taking away control for a bit. Another thing that I think action games should be trying to achieve is a "flow state", where the player can get immersed in the combat and go "into the zone" so to speak. I was never able to accomplish that in this game due to the constant interruptions.
The game also seems to think that the best way to increase difficulty is to just give bosses more health and more obnoxious mechanics. Late-game bosses are absolute sponges on anything higher than Easy mode, and they're loaded with long-duration hard-to-avoid stuns and full-screen unavoidable attacks.
The final straw for me was Whisper Bahamut, one of the final fights in the game. After dealing a little bit of damage to him, he ripped me out of combat and into a cutscene, where he used MegaFlare. This MegaFlare (which was PART OF A CUTSCENE) instantly killed one of my three party members, and brought the others within inches of death. Immediately after I regained control he sent an undodgeable attack at one of the remaining ones, and launched unavoidable missiles at the last party member, who died through Block. This death sent me back to the very beginning of the entire Whisper fight, since the whole 20-minute affair is considered a single fight. This also means the numerous cutscenes during the encounter are unskippable. This was the moment I turned the game off, and when I came back I set the difficulty to Easy. On Easy mode these fights are trivial.
Wow, I haven't even talked about the story yet. I guess it's time to get into that.
For most of the game, the story is very enjoyable. It's a fun RPG story about saving the planet by taking down an evil corporation that's exploiting it for money and influence. Obviously there's more to it than that, but that's the crux of the story in this game (which is only part one of several). Every once in a while Sephiroth and some spooky ghosts ("Whispers") will appear and do something mysterious, but these occurrences are rarely and not explained. It was clear to me from the beginning that the Whispers were trying to force the main characters to follow a particular path (presumably the same one the original game follows), so I expected some kind of meta-commentary about the nature of art or whatever to develop from them later down the line. Sephiroth is kinda just being vaguely spooky, but I figured this was mostly setup for the later installments of this Remake. This is all fine. There are a few chapters that feel like filler, such as the haunted train station, but none of it was that bothersome.
Where things go off the rails is in the Shinra headquarters. Once you get to the Jenova area, Sephiroth shows up and fucks with your party, separating you. This seems like it would lead to a climax, but instead you spend the next couple of hours going in circles, fighting a smorgasbord of forgettable robots and genetic experiments while Hojo laughs maniacally at you. This entire segment felt like a complete waste of my time, especially since I could tell I was nearing the end of the game. Your conflict with Hojo is never resolved, and none of the enemies you fight in this section matter at all to the story. This was the first time I felt myself getting annoyed by the story.
After this, you reach the office of President Shinra and can finally confront him. This scene proceeds predictably but without much issue. Suddenly, Sephiroth appears and kills Shinra, then throws you into a dream world of sorts to fight an eldritch monstrosity. Okay... Not sure what this has to do with anything, but fine. JRPGs are no stranger to non-sequitur boss fights, though this one feels particularly strangely-placed. After this Shinra's son appears with no build-up whatsoever, attempts to kill Cloud, and then just kind of leaves. This felt kind of tacked-on, but assuming that the son is relevant going forward I suppose it's not the worst way to introduce him.
Because Cloud is an anime protagonist and wants to fight alone for no reason, the party gets split again. Barret and Aerith end up back on the bottom floor and are surrounded. Then they are saved by Cloud and Tifa... who burst into the scene on a motorcycle and a goofy three-wheeled pickup truck. Cloud then proceeds to do some of the most absurd bollywood-esque action moves I've ever seen, and chases the Shinra guards off by force of sheer comedy. This scene felt COMPLETELY out of place to me, like I had suddenly started playing a different game. While Final Fantasy is no stranger to goofiness, this particular installment had been mostly serious up to this point, and this particular moment felt like it was supposed to be a climactic scene and a character moment for Barret and/or Aerith. Instead they get deus-ex-machina'd by absolute nonsense. This is followed by an overly-long dumbass chase scene where you fight yet another forgettable giant robot.
At the end of this chase scene, you basically crash into Sephiroth, who is literally standing on the highway in your way so that he can take over the plot. He says a bunch of vague nonsense and opens a portal, and then Aerith looks directly at the camera and says "Hey actually Sephiroth is the real big bad of this video game and he's going to try to destroy the world later. Remember Final Fantasy 7? Remember Meteor? This is the plot now, fuck you." Once you go through the portal, you're transported to a Hell dimension where you have to kill god.
I feel like I shouldn't have to explain what my issue with this is, but since no one I can find online seems to have a problem with it I guess I will. This entire ending section feels like it comes completely out of nowhere and has literally no connection to anything else that happened in the plot of the game. You literally go from a goofy chase scene running from Big Bad Corporation to "Let's Kill God" in the span of 5 minutes. I expected that the Whispers were some kinds of agents of Fate or something, but this was the worst possible way that this plot thread could've been properly introduced and dealt with. On top of that, the "explanation" of what the Whispers are and what they're trying to do reeks of Kingdom Hearts writing - it's steeped in so much vague cryptic language that it's impossible to follow what anyone's even talking about on a first pass. Far from the Undertale-esque meta-commentary I was hoping for, this is more like listening to Xemnas explain the Recusant's Sigil.
I should add that I am a fan of Kingdom Hearts. I can tolerate dumb anime bullshit stories that barely make sense and go out of their way to be hard to follow. But that isn't what this game was like at all until right at the end. What bothers me is the tone shift, and the fact that the ending of the game feels wholly unrelated to the entire rest of the game. Similarly I'm not opposed to games like this having comedic moments, but the motorcycle action scene felt poorly placed and without much precedent within FF7R. If a similar scene happened in a more comedic game like FF6, or in a more comedic section of 7R like Wall Market, then it would be fine.
In short, I felt like the story took a number of wild turns at the very end that did not fit with the tone or story that the rest of the game spent so long building up. I came away disappointed with the lack of conclusion the main plot thread got, and annoyed with the Kingdom Hearts-esque bullshit that plagued the ending.
I would've given this game an 8 or so if I was judging just the first ~30 hours, but with how much the ending soured the experience I can't give it anything higher than a 6 in good conscience.
I'll start with the issues I had with the combat. Although for most of the game it was pretty enjoyable, as the game progressed and tried to increase the challenge it started to feel increasingly frustrating and unfair. This is an Action RPG unlike the original game. In my opinion as a fan of action games such as Kingdom Hearts, Bloodborne, and various MetroidVania games, in a good action game it should be possible to get through an entire fight without taking any damage, at least in boss fights. It certainly doesn't need to be easy, but having virtually every instance of damage be preventable is a big factor in making difficult action combat feel "fair". FF7R does not appear to feel the same way. There are tons of bosses with unavoidable or near-unavoidable moves which you are expected to block, and the dodge roll is near-useless in most scenarios since it seems to have no i-frames whatsoever.
Now, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. The game wants to encourage blocking more than dodging - fine. It's a remake of a turn-based RPG where taking damage in each battle is unavoidable. The real problem with this design philosophy is that blocking is also a bad idea a lot of the time. Late-game bosses tend to be loaded with unblockable moves, which you can't really dodge either due to your lack of i-frames and their enormous hitboxes. On top of this many late-game bosses almost never stagger at all when they're hit, so you can't interrupt these moves, and your attacks have so much start-up and end-lag that it's impossible to block in time when you see them start to wind up a move while you're attacking. This latter issue is most pronounced against the Whisper bosses at the very end. So you can't dodge effectively, you can't block effectively, you can't stagger them by staying on offense... there's not a whole lot it feels like you can do to effectively mitigate damage. This isn't helped by how easy it is to get knocked out of your healing animation, taking more damage while also wasting resources.
Theoretically, I figure the intended way to open up enemies for damage is to Stagger them. While this sounds good on paper, you need to put enemies into a "pressured" state in order to stagger them most of the time, and it seemed almost random when this would happen for many late-game fights. Sometimes a certain move would cause it, sometimes not. Without any way to know how to cause this state, I felt like I was simply waiting for the game to decide I was allowed to stagger bosses. At least once they're staggered I can get good damage in, right? Well...
Another problem with bosses in this game is how often they pull you out of combat to watch a mini-cutscene. Each boss seems to have a ton of mini-phases tied to their health percentage; in theory this is a great way to spice up long fights, but because each new "phase" immediately takes them out of Stagger and forces you to watch a 10-second cinematic, it actually just prevents you from doing more than a relatively miniscule amount of damage during the boss's damage phases. Not only does this completely invalidate any kind of DPS-maximizing strategy, it also breaks any sense of flow you might've had by resetting the battlefield and taking away control for a bit. Another thing that I think action games should be trying to achieve is a "flow state", where the player can get immersed in the combat and go "into the zone" so to speak. I was never able to accomplish that in this game due to the constant interruptions.
The game also seems to think that the best way to increase difficulty is to just give bosses more health and more obnoxious mechanics. Late-game bosses are absolute sponges on anything higher than Easy mode, and they're loaded with long-duration hard-to-avoid stuns and full-screen unavoidable attacks.
The final straw for me was Whisper Bahamut, one of the final fights in the game. After dealing a little bit of damage to him, he ripped me out of combat and into a cutscene, where he used MegaFlare. This MegaFlare (which was PART OF A CUTSCENE) instantly killed one of my three party members, and brought the others within inches of death. Immediately after I regained control he sent an undodgeable attack at one of the remaining ones, and launched unavoidable missiles at the last party member, who died through Block. This death sent me back to the very beginning of the entire Whisper fight, since the whole 20-minute affair is considered a single fight. This also means the numerous cutscenes during the encounter are unskippable. This was the moment I turned the game off, and when I came back I set the difficulty to Easy. On Easy mode these fights are trivial.
Wow, I haven't even talked about the story yet. I guess it's time to get into that.
For most of the game, the story is very enjoyable. It's a fun RPG story about saving the planet by taking down an evil corporation that's exploiting it for money and influence. Obviously there's more to it than that, but that's the crux of the story in this game (which is only part one of several). Every once in a while Sephiroth and some spooky ghosts ("Whispers") will appear and do something mysterious, but these occurrences are rarely and not explained. It was clear to me from the beginning that the Whispers were trying to force the main characters to follow a particular path (presumably the same one the original game follows), so I expected some kind of meta-commentary about the nature of art or whatever to develop from them later down the line. Sephiroth is kinda just being vaguely spooky, but I figured this was mostly setup for the later installments of this Remake. This is all fine. There are a few chapters that feel like filler, such as the haunted train station, but none of it was that bothersome.
Where things go off the rails is in the Shinra headquarters. Once you get to the Jenova area, Sephiroth shows up and fucks with your party, separating you. This seems like it would lead to a climax, but instead you spend the next couple of hours going in circles, fighting a smorgasbord of forgettable robots and genetic experiments while Hojo laughs maniacally at you. This entire segment felt like a complete waste of my time, especially since I could tell I was nearing the end of the game. Your conflict with Hojo is never resolved, and none of the enemies you fight in this section matter at all to the story. This was the first time I felt myself getting annoyed by the story.
After this, you reach the office of President Shinra and can finally confront him. This scene proceeds predictably but without much issue. Suddenly, Sephiroth appears and kills Shinra, then throws you into a dream world of sorts to fight an eldritch monstrosity. Okay... Not sure what this has to do with anything, but fine. JRPGs are no stranger to non-sequitur boss fights, though this one feels particularly strangely-placed. After this Shinra's son appears with no build-up whatsoever, attempts to kill Cloud, and then just kind of leaves. This felt kind of tacked-on, but assuming that the son is relevant going forward I suppose it's not the worst way to introduce him.
Because Cloud is an anime protagonist and wants to fight alone for no reason, the party gets split again. Barret and Aerith end up back on the bottom floor and are surrounded. Then they are saved by Cloud and Tifa... who burst into the scene on a motorcycle and a goofy three-wheeled pickup truck. Cloud then proceeds to do some of the most absurd bollywood-esque action moves I've ever seen, and chases the Shinra guards off by force of sheer comedy. This scene felt COMPLETELY out of place to me, like I had suddenly started playing a different game. While Final Fantasy is no stranger to goofiness, this particular installment had been mostly serious up to this point, and this particular moment felt like it was supposed to be a climactic scene and a character moment for Barret and/or Aerith. Instead they get deus-ex-machina'd by absolute nonsense. This is followed by an overly-long dumbass chase scene where you fight yet another forgettable giant robot.
At the end of this chase scene, you basically crash into Sephiroth, who is literally standing on the highway in your way so that he can take over the plot. He says a bunch of vague nonsense and opens a portal, and then Aerith looks directly at the camera and says "Hey actually Sephiroth is the real big bad of this video game and he's going to try to destroy the world later. Remember Final Fantasy 7? Remember Meteor? This is the plot now, fuck you." Once you go through the portal, you're transported to a Hell dimension where you have to kill god.
I feel like I shouldn't have to explain what my issue with this is, but since no one I can find online seems to have a problem with it I guess I will. This entire ending section feels like it comes completely out of nowhere and has literally no connection to anything else that happened in the plot of the game. You literally go from a goofy chase scene running from Big Bad Corporation to "Let's Kill God" in the span of 5 minutes. I expected that the Whispers were some kinds of agents of Fate or something, but this was the worst possible way that this plot thread could've been properly introduced and dealt with. On top of that, the "explanation" of what the Whispers are and what they're trying to do reeks of Kingdom Hearts writing - it's steeped in so much vague cryptic language that it's impossible to follow what anyone's even talking about on a first pass. Far from the Undertale-esque meta-commentary I was hoping for, this is more like listening to Xemnas explain the Recusant's Sigil.
I should add that I am a fan of Kingdom Hearts. I can tolerate dumb anime bullshit stories that barely make sense and go out of their way to be hard to follow. But that isn't what this game was like at all until right at the end. What bothers me is the tone shift, and the fact that the ending of the game feels wholly unrelated to the entire rest of the game. Similarly I'm not opposed to games like this having comedic moments, but the motorcycle action scene felt poorly placed and without much precedent within FF7R. If a similar scene happened in a more comedic game like FF6, or in a more comedic section of 7R like Wall Market, then it would be fine.
In short, I felt like the story took a number of wild turns at the very end that did not fit with the tone or story that the rest of the game spent so long building up. I came away disappointed with the lack of conclusion the main plot thread got, and annoyed with the Kingdom Hearts-esque bullshit that plagued the ending.
I would've given this game an 8 or so if I was judging just the first ~30 hours, but with how much the ending soured the experience I can't give it anything higher than a 6 in good conscience.
Some of the worst controls I've ever encountered on a console shooter. I know it's an old game so they hadn't quite figured it out yet, but damn.
This review contains spoilers
A significant step down in terms of story, but it makes up for it with a ton of great gameplay content.
The story this time takes us to both Ala Mhigo and Doma, two places that we've had a lot of teasers for up until now, and tries to take us through the liberation of both from the Empire. While this sounds good on paper, in theory I feel that the writers bit off a bit more than they could chew here. Cramming all of the worldbuilding and story and liberation of two entire unrelated nations into one expansion leaves both of them feeling kind of rushed and underwhelming. More than anything it makes the liberation feel anticlimactic - and Ala Mhigo suffers from this much worse than Doma due to how the expansion's story is laid out. Ala Mhigo's story begins at the start of the expansion, and then right when things are starting to get interesting it gets put on hold while we go to Doma. The Doman storyline plays out from start to finish mostly uninterrupted, and then we pivot back to Ala Mhigo at the end. The problem here is that by the time we return to Ala Mhigo I've forgotten or stopped caring much about what was established there earlier, and the time between going back and successfully liberating the nation is so short that it ends up feeling way too easy. If the two nations' storylines played out in full one after the other it might've felt a bit more like two unrelated stories slapped together, but at least it wouldn't have undercut the climax so badly.
Related to this are my problems with Zenos. When he's first introduced as a powerful edgy pretty boy villain I was all on board - I am a Final Fantasy fan after all. When he beat me in battle multiple times I was excited to see how we would eventually defeat him. The answer is... you just kinda beat him. He comments about your time in Doma making you stronger, but why exactly would it have made me that much stronger? I understand that mechanically I'm level 70 instead of level 63 or whatever but that doesn't really jive with me as a canonical reason - if you start acknowledging levels in canon then you start needing to ask why there are packs of sheep in the sewers of Ala Mhigo that could easily defeat the Ultima Weapon. Sure I defeated a few primals in Doma, but nothing stronger than what I had already beaten dozens of times previously. I just don't get why my character went from barely being able to touch Zenos to suddenly winning.
On top of that, I felt like I was being teased with some master plan Zenos was cooking up regarding "The Hunt", and that I would be lured into a trap or he would have some way of quashing the rebellion at the last minute. But then "The Hunt" turned out to be just... fighting me. And he loses. And that's it. Considering that a number of earlier Ala Mhigan victories happened because Zenos intentionally let us win in order to facilitate "The Hunt", in retrospect it feels like the only reason we won is because Zenos is a total fucking idiot with regards to tactics and shot himself in the foot repeatedly for no reason. It's another thing that makes the Ala Mhigan story seem seriously anticlimactic.
Beyond that there's the other characters who by and large are, well, fine. Lyse is a perfectly serviceable shounen protagonist who's a little self-serious and fights for her friends, but I could never really shake the feeling that she was now a completely different character from the person I met in ARR. I know that's intentional, but it felt less like natural character development and more like a change of writers and of story priorities. If her goofy comic-relief personality still reared its head every once in a while it would feel more real. Alisaie is a little better in that she at least doesn't feel like her character was completely changed, and she's a good character overall, but she's a little too normal to be exciting, and she keeps getting random injuries that remove her from the story for long stretches.
The non-Zenos villains on the other hand are great. Yotsuyu and Fordola are the two best and most developed villains in the whole game so far and do a fantastic job of mirroring each other - they end up on fairly different paths by the end of Post-Stormblood despite having fairly similar upbringings and life circumstances. They were both highlights of the main story but their post-SB stories really shot them up into the highest tier of characters.
All in all the story was serviceable but really messy. A few more revisions could've done wonders for cleaning up the loose ends. The post-story is pretty great on the other hand, but it feels slightly unfair to credit Stormblood too highly just for having great Shadowbringers setup.
The GAMEPLAY on the other hand, that's a whole different story. Not only do you get into the levels where each job starts having quite a lot to do, but the boss mechanics start going crazy even in normal dungeons. The Trial and Raid bosses have some insanely flashy and cool moments, and many of the dungeons have memorable or unique moments even just in traversal. The breadth of content is also insane - not only do we get the standard-issue max-level dungeons, raid series, trial series (with extra dungeons included!), and Hildibrand (with duties!), but on top of that there's also a bonus Monster Hunter trial, the first Ultimate raid, a whole new Deep Dungeon, and an entire mini-MMO (Eureka) complete with an old-school WoW-style raid of its own. The sheer amount of content in Stormblood blows Heavensward out of the water, and the intensity level of that content is way higher on average which makes a lot of it really fun. This is also the expansion that added Blue Mage, so if you count that then it's an even bigger swath of content.
Overall this expansion felt very gameplay-first. If you're here mostly for the story you'll probably be disappointed until the post-expac story, but if you love hard bosses and having tons of stuff to do then this could easily be one of your favorite expansions. Personally I rate it lower than Heavensward, but not by much.
The story this time takes us to both Ala Mhigo and Doma, two places that we've had a lot of teasers for up until now, and tries to take us through the liberation of both from the Empire. While this sounds good on paper, in theory I feel that the writers bit off a bit more than they could chew here. Cramming all of the worldbuilding and story and liberation of two entire unrelated nations into one expansion leaves both of them feeling kind of rushed and underwhelming. More than anything it makes the liberation feel anticlimactic - and Ala Mhigo suffers from this much worse than Doma due to how the expansion's story is laid out. Ala Mhigo's story begins at the start of the expansion, and then right when things are starting to get interesting it gets put on hold while we go to Doma. The Doman storyline plays out from start to finish mostly uninterrupted, and then we pivot back to Ala Mhigo at the end. The problem here is that by the time we return to Ala Mhigo I've forgotten or stopped caring much about what was established there earlier, and the time between going back and successfully liberating the nation is so short that it ends up feeling way too easy. If the two nations' storylines played out in full one after the other it might've felt a bit more like two unrelated stories slapped together, but at least it wouldn't have undercut the climax so badly.
Related to this are my problems with Zenos. When he's first introduced as a powerful edgy pretty boy villain I was all on board - I am a Final Fantasy fan after all. When he beat me in battle multiple times I was excited to see how we would eventually defeat him. The answer is... you just kinda beat him. He comments about your time in Doma making you stronger, but why exactly would it have made me that much stronger? I understand that mechanically I'm level 70 instead of level 63 or whatever but that doesn't really jive with me as a canonical reason - if you start acknowledging levels in canon then you start needing to ask why there are packs of sheep in the sewers of Ala Mhigo that could easily defeat the Ultima Weapon. Sure I defeated a few primals in Doma, but nothing stronger than what I had already beaten dozens of times previously. I just don't get why my character went from barely being able to touch Zenos to suddenly winning.
On top of that, I felt like I was being teased with some master plan Zenos was cooking up regarding "The Hunt", and that I would be lured into a trap or he would have some way of quashing the rebellion at the last minute. But then "The Hunt" turned out to be just... fighting me. And he loses. And that's it. Considering that a number of earlier Ala Mhigan victories happened because Zenos intentionally let us win in order to facilitate "The Hunt", in retrospect it feels like the only reason we won is because Zenos is a total fucking idiot with regards to tactics and shot himself in the foot repeatedly for no reason. It's another thing that makes the Ala Mhigan story seem seriously anticlimactic.
Beyond that there's the other characters who by and large are, well, fine. Lyse is a perfectly serviceable shounen protagonist who's a little self-serious and fights for her friends, but I could never really shake the feeling that she was now a completely different character from the person I met in ARR. I know that's intentional, but it felt less like natural character development and more like a change of writers and of story priorities. If her goofy comic-relief personality still reared its head every once in a while it would feel more real. Alisaie is a little better in that she at least doesn't feel like her character was completely changed, and she's a good character overall, but she's a little too normal to be exciting, and she keeps getting random injuries that remove her from the story for long stretches.
The non-Zenos villains on the other hand are great. Yotsuyu and Fordola are the two best and most developed villains in the whole game so far and do a fantastic job of mirroring each other - they end up on fairly different paths by the end of Post-Stormblood despite having fairly similar upbringings and life circumstances. They were both highlights of the main story but their post-SB stories really shot them up into the highest tier of characters.
All in all the story was serviceable but really messy. A few more revisions could've done wonders for cleaning up the loose ends. The post-story is pretty great on the other hand, but it feels slightly unfair to credit Stormblood too highly just for having great Shadowbringers setup.
The GAMEPLAY on the other hand, that's a whole different story. Not only do you get into the levels where each job starts having quite a lot to do, but the boss mechanics start going crazy even in normal dungeons. The Trial and Raid bosses have some insanely flashy and cool moments, and many of the dungeons have memorable or unique moments even just in traversal. The breadth of content is also insane - not only do we get the standard-issue max-level dungeons, raid series, trial series (with extra dungeons included!), and Hildibrand (with duties!), but on top of that there's also a bonus Monster Hunter trial, the first Ultimate raid, a whole new Deep Dungeon, and an entire mini-MMO (Eureka) complete with an old-school WoW-style raid of its own. The sheer amount of content in Stormblood blows Heavensward out of the water, and the intensity level of that content is way higher on average which makes a lot of it really fun. This is also the expansion that added Blue Mage, so if you count that then it's an even bigger swath of content.
Overall this expansion felt very gameplay-first. If you're here mostly for the story you'll probably be disappointed until the post-expac story, but if you love hard bosses and having tons of stuff to do then this could easily be one of your favorite expansions. Personally I rate it lower than Heavensward, but not by much.
![Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r]](https://images.igdb.com/igdb/image/upload/t_cover_big/co25f8.jpg)
Played it in-person at a friend's house and the game seemed tight as hell. Super fun and really easy to get into even with absolutely zero prior knowledge of the game or its mechanics. I would've bought it immediately if it had rollback.