This game and this expac changed my life. Like there's a certain experience that just cant be found anywhere else than in mmos. Playing this on release and seeing discussion revolving different parts of the story, talking about things with friends, travelling the journey with new friends you've made along the way; its just magical. All of the memories you make, the challenges you overcome, and the growth you have, on top of just having a fantastic game overall is amazing. Endwalker specifically really feels like the culmination of the entire final fantasy franchises lifespan come into appreciation of its players. Will probably forever remain my favorite game.

This game felt pretty good but when I realized how easy it was to break it and that I didn't really care for the story I lost a lot of fun. It was already relatively easy on expert (highest difficulty before NG), but I would have to limit myself to have any challenge.

They present you with an open world but there is a very clear linear path they expect you to take as the areas are set to specific levels that will give you a hard time if you attempt to overcome them. Even so, it's very easy to come up with a good strategy for one unit and stomp over higher level enemies until you yourself are too high.

I tried very many combinations and there's a lot to work with so it can feel pretty good to come out with something cool. That being said, the game expects you to build around countering specific units, but with a good team and maybe some overleveling, the counter system doesn't really matter. It doesn't feel good to have a few units who just decimate everything and have some units who might be good against a specific type of enemy. Cavalries are stupid broken.

Eventually, your army will grow very large, and it can be extremely cumbersome to have to manage 40-50 people at once. This could also be a part of the appeal, as the tactics system is pretty neat and it is fun to work with usually.

The animations are really good but at some point just feel time consuming and I ended up skipping all of them which is a bummer. The art style in this game is top tier, thank you Vanillaware. That being said though, a HUGE amount of character designs feel undermined by the fact that they look largely the same as mercenaries/common hired units. I was so disappointed when I learned one of the characters I started this game for, Yahna, was basically a carbon copy of the witch mercenary. I think if you someone to care about a character, having them be visually indistinguishable from NPCs is not a good idea.

I think the story ends up being pretty barebones, which is a shame because the rapports/supports and small character moments were all pretty great. The music was nothing to write home about imo but it wasn't bad either.

Overall, I think it's a decent game that I think falls short in aspects that I crave in a tactical RPG, being challenge, story, and music. I could see someone loving this, but for me its a bit too slow and long, with mostly good aspects but nothing great. I feel like I dogged on the game a lot in this review but it does genuinely have good things going for it and I would play it again. This is still the dumbest name I have seen for a serious game. At least you can marry your cousin.

i fought some goblins and saw this cool hole and went in and i was like wow theres this cool little cellar here. then i broke a wall down and saw a cave and i was like wow theres a cool spider cave. then i beat all the spiders and saw this ominous hole and jumped down and theres an entire different world down there.

i have like 16 hours on my tactician solo playthrough and i havent even touched the goblin camp yet. exploring and going around doing all these little side quests dont even feel like side quests it just feels like cool world building that i just happened to stumble upon while looking for shit. im so immersed.

the multiplayer on this is also just so fun. online is super smooth and its hilarious having different people all trying to figure out what to do.

i was also genuinely shocked when i randomly booted this up in front of my friend and found out theres local coop. we immediately started playing and it was a blast.

easily goty.

i think i came out liking this game less than i did before which im a little upset about but the game has so much cool shit going for it and it disappoints on damn near all of it.

I've realized that making an engaging open world is a very hard thing to do and I don't think this game does it or even encourages you to explore said "open world." i think conceptually open world with linear story will never work. as such, how this game tries to tell its story often does not work. Many of the characters being fleshed out in content that isn't a part of the base game is also really fucking weird. Several important characters like Lunafreya or Aranea have non-existent character arcs because of it.

The story is what I would describe as "sporadic" which is strange considering the linearity of it. Maybe it's to add to the "journey" feel of it but often times story beats felt like they just happened and didn't really go anywhere or have a purpose, even if that wasn't necessarily true. Even still, the story tended to be enjoyable in typical Final Fantasy fashion. I think the climax of the game was still really epic.

The gameplay is also pretty stale bread but there are times when I found it quite enjoyable. Like I said earlier, warping and shit is really cool.

I also quite enjoy the main 4 bros and Ardyn, though I wish all of them could have been fleshed out more. The music in this game is obviously top notch. I wish Tony had willed Versus XIII into a better game. In the end, Ardyn is just a diet Emet-Selch. Thanks for reading.

6/10