In this moment, I am euphoric. Fantasy SRPGs are back baby.

So TS really splits its gameplay into three main segments and it is extremely successful at all of them.

1. Tactical combat - challenging and strategic. there are units better than others, but it is also a helluva lot more balanced than something like FFT. There is a greater emphasis on grabbing aggro and setting up dominos of damage dealing with TP. There is little chance to grind your units to a higher level than your enemies as to make battles irrelevant, but it is VERY easy to train lower level units to parity. A successful fight usually left me exhaling in relief at the end of it and rarely frustrated.

2. Exploration - another way to learn about the world and its inhabitants besides reading lore bits. It's fun, I enjoyed seeing the different architecture and personality of places in the world. Makes it feel lived in. As Serenoa you converse and pilfer everything around you in a given space, usually to help with our third bit of the gameplay triangle

3. The Scales of Conviction - ur choices matter. A major choice is presented to you, but it is really the choice for your inner circle to decide. Your only power is to sway them to your opinion, which you can FAIL at especially if you did a poor job exploring and gathering information. Decisions and dialogue chosen in the past can also effect how difficult swaying someone to a certain option might be.

And the choices are not some milquetoast bullshit. It is also usually more complex than Do Evil Thing Or Not, because the writing is eloquent enough to give forceful argument to even the most abhorrent choice. The characters have a dynamism that lends authority behind certain choices you might otherwise not take. Their pleas can be persuasive, I had my mind changed SEVERAL times through dialogue with my confidants.

This game fucking rules. Just be prepared to pay attention to the cutscenes.

Chadley may be an interesting avatar of SHINRA's desire to dissect and extract every nugget of value from the planet, and therefore reflect the modern player's desire to do every peabrained activity if it has a node on a world map but he still SUCKS.

Rebirth is boring open world busywork in between the actual interesting bits that made Remake such a fantastic game. I still like those bits, I still like the whole conceit of these sequels, but this is an unnecessarily bloated recitation of those elements.

The sidequests are not far removed from the pointless overworld nonsense and are as weak as they were in Remake. The world at this fidelity just isnt as symmetrical or foreboding as it was on PSX; the party dont fade into the background of the world, they tower over it with far more colored in personality. I believe, for a number of reasons, that this is fine considering the nature of the game's existence and what it's saying about FF7 as a cultural product, but it also means that the more this new series becomes a by-the-numbers AAA rpg the more a contradiction arises.