So I'm a classically trained violist, and I've been playing since I was around 9. Yanny vs Laurel really helped me grow as a musician because it was when I first understood ear training and aural skills. Upon first hearing the sound, my inclination was Yanny. I was a kid surrounded by the company of other kids, and I played an instrument with a semi-high register. It was only natural that I heard Yanny. But it was brought to my attention by my friend who played double bass that he heard Laurel. I decided to listen for the lower register, and there it was, clear as day! It was a really powerful moment for me and it really goes to show how two things can be true at the same time. Have a blessed day, everyone.

I think I want to give VRChat my first and only five-star rating largely out of principle. I've only spent roughly 20 hours ingame so far, and half of that time was spent pirating an entire HBO series in a media world.

I'm an anthropology student who just downloaded the game in 2022 but I am utterly fascinated with the social interactions that occur here.

Freshman year of college I did a small ethnographic project on social interations within Town of Salem's game chat, and I really regret that I hadn't studied VRChat instead. There was one world I went to where you spawn on a train that moves forever, and there were two people sitting on top who were edating. I could basically hear their whole conversation. They must have been aware, but they didn't seem to mind. My friends and I also explored a virtual art museum, while our artist friend gave an explanation of the famous pieces.

There are so many interesting layers to peel back when it comes to people watching. And if you don't want to do that, you can always just pirate an entire TV series, because it's way too easy to do that.

VRChat isn't my favorite game, not by a longshot. I don't even own a VR headset, I play this game in desktop mode. But I've never explored a virtual space with more childlike wonder than when I wander the nooks and crannies of this game's many worlds. Meta and Mark Zuckerberg could never accomplish creating a space like this. While VRChat worlds contain a couple semi-ironic and easy to ignore advertisment posters, and creator bulletins thanking loyal patrons, Meta is creating a sterile, work-friendly environment backed with tv ads promoting virtual Jon Batiste tshirts and NFTs. VRChat isn't necessarily a videogame, but its association with Steam, Oculus, and gaming as a whole works as a natural gatekeeper from corporate takeover. Of course, this skews the playerbase in an unfavorable direction (creepy gamers can flood certain spaces) but the silver lining remains: VRChat is a virtual space largely untainted by the real world. As a result, exploring the game is captivating.

TL;DR: I pirated all of HBO's The White Lotus within a week on VRChat. If anything, get it to do that.

Gonna abstain from giving this a star rating. This might be a tough thing to swallow, but Pokemon Scarlet and Violet do not deserve your praise, even if you think they do.

If you had fun with these games, unironically, please keep that shit to yourself. I'm not saying these are the worst games ever made. I can certainly understand why people are enjoying them in spite of the massive flaws. It's pokemon, the gameplay loop is the same, and the music rocks. Of course you're enjoying it.

What I think a lot of people don't understand is that there are people behind these games, behind TPC and Game Freak, and all around the games industry who are affected by this franchise. Game Freak has been experiencing massive crunch for a long time, starting with them being dragged into 3D game development, kicking and screaming. Recent years have created even more crunch. Interviews with developers during the release window of Sword and Shield said that Game Freak was working on a HD backlog of high quality pokemon models and animations, and that turned out to be a flat out lie. Legends Arceus, despite all the praise it got for switching the formula up, is still fucking disgusting to look at, and it has clunky controls and mechanics. BDSP were outsourced entirely and were awful excuses for video games. Given all of this, I am still reluctant to blame the developers at Game Freak. Pokemon is a multimedia francise with strict deadlines that also must align with merchandising, anime, and trading cards. The Pokemon franchise has been overcome by corporate greed, period. Endorsing Scarlet and Violet given their quality level, even if you still personally enjoyed the games, sends a horrifying message to the games industry, TPC, and Game Freak that flat out says, "I am okay with developer crunch and half baked products! If you sell me this, I will buy it!"

Discourse with this series has also always been bad, with genwunners dominating conversations, and players prioritizing pokemon walking around behind the player as opposed to pokemon games telling competent stories with interesting bosses (looking at you, johto apologists), just to name an example. Dexit took the already garbage-level pokemon discourse and plunged it deeper underground. Players chose to complain about the lack of Tropius and Purugly in Sword and Shield's pokedex, instead of focusing on the rushed story, poor quality animations, empty towns, lack of voice acting, the list goes on...

So many gamers care more about their instant gratification instead of the lives of real human beings, and I think this issue extends far beyond pokemon. If you go to Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick's Twitter replies, a vast majority of his hate comments don't even pertain to his horrifying harrasment scandals or massive corporate greed. It's Call of Duty fans begging him to fix their game. This is a deep rooted social problem with gamers in the midst of consumer culture, and pokemon fans aren't exempt.

To reiterate, if you enjoyed Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, keep that shit to yourself. The lives of developers are more important than your instant gratification. I swear to god, if I see one more post on r/pokemon titled “unpopular opinion…but I actually love scarlet and violet” with tens of thousands of upvotes, i'm gonna lose it.

If you still want to try this game out, buy it secondhand.

Live A Live has an extreme overreliance on tropes. I've seen people call this game "a love letter to JRPGs", but really, it feels more like a love letter to classic films, shoddily incorporating some of their story elements and aesthetics into each vignette-like story path. When you take away the poorly rehashed film stories, you're left with a game that never commits to any of its mechanics.

The battle system had the opportunity to shine, but it never truly excelled. It was a genuinely cool idea: a grid-based battlefield in which each protagonist has a different moveset and playstyle. There were plenty of status effects, and you could also affect certain grid tiles with statuses too. There were a bunch of different move "types", indicated by a little symbol next to the move's name. Some enemies had weaknesses and resistances that the player could exploit as well.
This seems all well and good, right? But the truth is, the effect these mechanics had on the gameplay was so incredibly minimal. Sure, each protagonist has different movesets. But the difference in "playstyle" is negligible. Resistances and weaknesses could be totally ignored in favor of raw damage. I hardly ever found myself resorting to any actual strategy when I was in battle. And the animations get to be super long, especially when grinding. There's no way to skip or speed them up. Not only did the game not explain the potency of back attacks, but there was little incentive to actually walk behind an enemy because their action bar would fill up. Physical and special attacks were also never explained to the player. The stats screen has separate stats for attack, phys. attack, and sp. attack, which makes no sense to me.
In general, the action bar never made sense to me. Counterattacks from enemies were seemingly arbitrary. And often times, after you attacked an enemy, their action bar would completely fill up (even if there were others with full bars) and immediately act, but not as a counterattack. The action bars were tiny in the UI and the game never quantified how much an action would fill the bars of enemies. Damage was never quantified either. All attack damage was classified as one of the following: Low, Medium, High, and Massive. Not only does this ruin any possible tactical depth, but it can be super misleading because multi-hit moves still could have low damage, and non-damaging moves like sleeps were still classified as low damaging. This also applied to charged moves - charge time was classified as either Short, Medium, or Long. And there was no visual or numerical quantifier to indicate to the player how long that actually is. Considering that different characters have different speed stats, there is truly no way any player could rely on these mechanics to make tactical decisions. Statuses and secondary effects had a seemingly random chance of occurring after attacks and the potency of different statuses varied wildly. Paralysis was insanely good, as it allowed you to take as many actions until the enemy recovered (or vice versa). Poison was so bad, the chip damage was sometimes in the single digits. Fortunately, there was an easy-to-access battle glossary of terms and symbols, but I found myself not even needing it due to how shallow and meaningless the mechanics are. If you just choose the high damaging moves, you will reliably win 99% of all battles you engage in, assuming you aren't in a grindy chapter and underleveled.

I think it makes sense to go through each chapter individually and give my thoughts on it. However, I want to make a disclaimer. Each of these chapters wears their influences on their sleeves, but I may have not engaged with the source material that they're referencing. For example, I have never seen 2001: A Space Odyssey or any Clint Eastwood cowboy movie. Because these film tropes are so widespread in this day and age, I don't think it should be a problem.


Prehistory

It seems like every chapter in the game has certain quirks to differentiate itself from the others. I'll get into each chapter's unique quirks as I go on, but in the case of Prehistory, the most obvious one is the fact that there's no dialogue at all. Any interactions onscreen are shown with little symbols, grunts, and sprite animations. And I just want to say that this was a colossal waste of potential. If there's an entire story with no dialogue, it would make sense to stimulate the players' other senses. This is even brought up in Pogo's theming, with his heightened smell and emphasis on instinct. But the game never properly took advantage of the visual nor audio effects. There's a few moments in the whole game when there are some really beautiful camera angles. One such instance is when The Sundown Kid first rides into town, another is during the anime opening of the Near Future. Prehistory never engages the visual medium in a meaningful way, when it was the chapter that needed it most. This also means that there's essentially no story here for me to speak of. There's the tropes of cavemen coexisting with dinosaurs, human sacrifice, and some of the worst comic relief I've ever witnessed in a video game, chock full of poop jokes and pink monkeys so the game makes absolutely sure that you know that the boy monkey is having sex with the girl monkeys. Gameplay wise, I actually really like the scent gimmick, even if it was a little confusing at first. It provides a happy medium for random encounters, and made navigating the open areas way more tolerable. The side objectives, like in every chapter, are absolutely awful. In order to find a special item and fight a secret boss, you have to press A in front of a rock 100 times. If you mess up, you have to restart. I tried fighting the mammoth secret boss but it was so bulky that I just gave up without beating it. Grinding yielded miniscule amounts of experience so I was not going to spend any more time on the chapter than I already did. Prehistory is probably my least favorite chapter. The story is nonexistent, the "comic relief" is terrible, and it wasn't ever fun for me. The battle theme was really good, though.


Imperial China

A predictable story with an unpredictable gameplay quirk that hurt the player. The story, while at the very least existing this time around, was definitely one I've seen many times before. The Shifu was the hero's journey mentor for three misfit students. What I didn't expect, is that you're only allowed to have one of them live. I trained the students equally during the training portion, which was a mistake. Yun was my successor, not that it made a significant difference in story nor gameplay. Gameplay wise, it's nothing special otherwise. The story is not only cliché kung fu hero's journey, but is also a flat out incomplete arc. Yun during the final battle acts like he was friends with Lei and Hong, but there was never any positive interaction to speak of. He didn't go through any trials aside from his training, he and the Shifu immediately left to get revenge. The only remotely interesting plot point was the fact that the protagonist was the Shifu instead of a student. Otherwise, it just rehashes a common kung fu movie plotline without any of the character development or worldbuilding that's present in those films. Let the record show that I fell asleep once while playing this chapter.


Twilight of Edo Japan

This is one of the most gameplay heavy chapters, and I personally think it suffers as a result. I was initially a fan of having pacifist/genocide-type routes. I went in planning to do a pacifist run, but that was quickly quashed once I got ahold of the stealth mechanic and password system. There were just so many potential mistakes a player could make, so I opted to do the genocide-type run instead. I failed. I followed a guide (which was annoying as hell by the way) and I guess I accidentally killed a single maiden, because you aren't able to get all 100 kills if you don't first leave all of them alive until the end. The last maiden that only appears under those circumstances won't show up otherwise, and didn't for me. I don't particularly regret what I did, because gaining experience would be even more of a bitch if I did the pacifist run (you have to grind against spirits in one area for a really long time!). Even killing as many NPCs as I saw (my final kill count was 80), combat was just as monotonous as ever. Story was super light and insignificant. The prisoner wasn't expanded on much and we never learn his real name iirc. There were multiple secret bosses which I think is super neat but I didn't go for them because I was so burned out already having been in ~EIGHTY fights. Exploring a labyrinth-like castle was also neat but the password rotation, annoying stealth mechanics, and overwhelming amount of NPCs and insignificant dead ends made it ultimately feel like a big chore. The game's mechanics seem to constantly be at odds with each other.


The Wild West

Still a mixed bag, but a significant improvement in the narrative department, and much less intrusive, at the very least, in the gameplay department. The story is still super cliché, as a simplistic nod to classic cowboy movies. An outlaw and a bounty hunter make an "unexpected" team in order to fight a greater evil and protect the town. It's totally unoriginal, but I still very much appreciate the voice work. It's some of the best of the game's voice acting. There were some great performances. I was way more invested in the characters here than most other chapters although that's probably because I was heavily invested in the homoerotic tension between The Sundown Kid and Mad Dog. After the story cutscenes end, you're pushed into a time-sensitive preparation mode, where you have to efficiently navigate to the proper town buildings, pick up the necessary items, and give them back to the people at the saloon to set up. After 8 bells ring, your time is up. This was not fun at all. I don't see how anyone had fun running around pressing A in front of items, only to rush back and navigate menus. The benefit of doing this is that you'll have less enemies to fight during the boss battle. Fortunately, this section isn't incredibly intrusive, so I still think that this chapter is one of the better ones.


Present Day

What the hell? Where's the story? There's literally no story here, aside from a Rocky-esque opening scene. The final boss comes out of nowhere, and his motives are nonexistent. You do a handful of battles against other fighters, and then fight the final boss. That's literally it. Masaru's gimmick is that he learns the moves of the other fighters once he gets hit by them. He cannot level up, and is capped at level TWO. This isn't a problem in his own chapter, but oh boy will it be later. I gave up on learning all of the moves because there was a certain boss who refused to use Worldbreaker's Wrath on me after several minutes of trying. This isn't the end of the world, because all moves you miss can be learned through level up later - but it was still annoying trying to learn that move for a while to no avail. I have nothing else to say about this chapter.


The Near Future

What it does stylistically is overshadowed by the clunkiness of everything else. The classic anime-style opening was incredibly charming! I thought Akira’s story was pretty uninteresting. The amount of times that they play the mind-reading sound effect is sickening lmfao. Having a robot in the party was kinda cool, I guess. Again, there are some really cool looking scenes, like when Akira, the doctor, and the robot look up at the towering mech. This just reinforces my point that the game had the capacity to look way nicer than it does most of the time. The sci-fi/religious twist with the final boss and giant mech were cool, I will admit. Infiltrating the laboratory felt cumbersome. Whatever, at least Akira’s attack names like “Mother’s Shame” were kinda funny.


The Distant Future

This is the only chapter in LIVE A LIVE that successfully subverts and deconstructs the film tropes that it’s inspired by. With a mix between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien, The Distant Future places OD-10 in the role of the rogue AI. What I find interesting in the way that this chapter is presented, is that the main character is also a robot. Cube is a wonderfully designed adorable character, and his storytelling as a silent protagonist is great. Contrasting Kato’s nurturing characteristics with the toxic love triangle aboard the ship portrays the complexity of human nature. Using a robot to do this was very smart. It also helps that there are no mandatory battles aside from the final boss, which is an incredibly easy fight. The Captain Square optional battle challenges were underwhelming, as it required finding a secret in order to save progress, and there was no reward for finishing it. I also wish Cube got a proper battle theme for his chapter. The only other unique game mechanic was…a crowbar. Uh, okay? I mean, navigating the halls with the alien creature was definitely creepy, so I guess I don’t mind. The Distant Future also has some great voice acting. By far the best storytelling in the entire game, and the only chapter to add a new perspective on the influences it wears on its sleeve. It’s a shame that they had to take the gameplay out entirely to make me feel this way.


The Middle Ages

This chapter features an actual overworld, which is kinda cool. I did not get attached to a single character, and I found it cheesy that Oersted got the girl after winning a tournament. The girl was captured, he gathered a party, and rescued her. Turns out he was betrayed, and he turned into the joker. It was an interesting twist that I didn’t expect, but I also didn’t sympathize or feel anything for him. He felt entitled to his girl, and when she was stolen and betrayed, he acted like the entire world was against him. Turning into/working with Odio didn’t really make sense to me for multiple reasons. The whole time travel thing in order to be the boss of each respective era/chapter already requires suspension of disbelief, but one would think that the actions of the other characters would restore Oersted’s faith in humanity. Wasn’t the Sundown Kid placed in the exact same situation, where he was ostracized as an outlaw, but did the right thing anyways? To be completely honest, Oersted could have been a sympathetic villain but instead ended up acting like an incel crybaby. Giving the villain his own origin story through a full chapter in the game could have been a great way to develop him, but the writers were too focused on falling into high fantasy tropes to write a good character.


Final Showdown

This sucked. I chose The Sundown Kid as my starting character because I heard online that he was the most troublesome to recruit. Considering this game wastes enough of the player’s time in this sequence, I opted to nip it in the bud. Otherwise, I would have picked Cube. Speaking of Cube, I was expecting the robot upgrade parts from Akira’s story to transfer to my inventory once I recruited him, but they weren’t there. This is partially the IGN guide’s fault for providing false information, but apparently the original SNES version did let the player carry over the robot upgrades? And they decided to remove that feature in this game? I only found one upgrade part through regular battles in the showdown sequence, but whatever. There was an extreme level imbalance between the other playable characters. Like I said earlier, Masaru was level TWO, and learns no moves that he couldn’t learn during his chapter. Sundown Kid did actually learn some really cool attacks. If you didn’t grind a ton with Oboromaru in his chapter, prepare to suffer. Overall, no interesting story bits were raised during the preparation section.
When finally challenging Oersted, it was flashy and I appreciated the presentation. But once again, the story bordered on incoherent. You redo boss fights, until you get a multiphase final fight with Odio. It’s very flashy, but all for show. It was hard to suspend disbelief when seeing all of the characters from each individual era stand next to each other, and Odio’s motives and logic were of course never explained.


The game’s story never stepped out of the shadows it basked in, and it shows. Its mechanics showed promise but ultimately failed to deliver, there were several questionable design choices, almost all of the individual stories were watered down film tropes with no added nuance, and the final sequence that tied them together couldn’t coherently explain why this was worth all the trouble. LIVE A LIVE’s occasional visual charm, good voice acting, and nostalgia factor couldn’t save it from its pure mediocrity. As a diehard Octopath fan, I can't believe people prefer this game over it; OT has a deep customizable job system with hidden jobs and one of the best soundtracks of all time. LIVE A LIVE's battle mechanics, even when scripted, are absolutely incomparable with a soundtrack that's only good and a story that's similarly cringeworthy. Put some respect on Octopath's name!

TLDR; one star for Cube, one star for gay cowboys

This is what Splatoon 2 should have been the whole time. Reviewing this game at launch will probably be a very dated thing to do considering it will probably look completely different in a year or so, but I don't have that much bad to say about it. Hopefully it will only get better from here. Grizzco should have been open 24/7 from the start and the fact that it wasn't in splat2 was actually braindead. It still annoys me that there are only two stages for each battle rotation. If one of them has Wahoo World, I'm immediately playing a different mode. Fortunately, one of the best parts about Splatoon 3, is that I can switch up whatever I'm doing and still retain my attention. Splitting ranked modes into single and series was actually a great move, because single is super low stakes and I feel way more comfortable trying out new weapon sets and generally just not getting tilted. If one of the ranked modes has rainmaker (ew!), I can just switch to the other ranked mode anytime I want. If I'm bored of battling in general, I can cool off with some tableturf battles.

The new special weapons are super fun and way better than most of the previous games'. I'm not a fan of the stringer weapon type, but I could get used to the splatana.

The story mode was better than past base game story modes, but didn't surpass Octo Expansion imo. I wish you were able to unlock the hero replica weapons of all weapon types like in splat2. As of right now, you only get the hero shot.

Salmon Run always ruled and it only really got better. I love how there are more rewards and customization options, because after I hit profreshional in splat2, I felt there was little reason to keep playing.

Customization in general will keep this game alive so much longer than the others, if the devs put some stake in it. Unlocking emotes, splashtags, locker items, etc. gives the proper extrinsic motivation that players need to keep playing after they squeeze this game dry for 100+ hours. That goes for cool gear as well. More, please.

The dripfeed-style content distribution that the splatoon team loves to do is not something I'm too fond of, but with the amount of modes that are already present (and other games I have to play), I'm not nearly as upset about it as I was with splatoon 2. Confirming DLC pre-release was very scummy, but as long as I get my money's worth in content, I'll be okay.

The worst part about this game is the servers. Full stop, they suck. Communication errors happen way too frequently, and they're always server-side. I may change the rating in the future based on how the forthcoming waves of content are, but this game will never deserve higher than what it has now if the communication and server issues don't get a major fix.

But yeah this game is fun!

EDIT this review is from years ago and shows a lot of its age, I still maintain ff7r is awful for newcomers but I played the original ff7 since and I'm willing to give it a second chance. Potential second playthrough incoming but still TBD

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I just finished the Final Fantasy 7 Remake and honestly, as a newcomer to FF7, it was kinda mid? Soundtrack was fire and presentation was mostly good but I definitely have some criticisms.

Combat was mixed for me. I liked the stagger mechanic and real time combat flowed well. Each party member having unique skills and play styles was neat, it honestly made me wish there were more playable party members. Summons were cool and the materia system was intuitive. I liked how different weapon skills being temporarily exclusive to their weapons compelled the player to try out all of the different ones. There were so many problems, though.
First off, the targeting and camera were complete garbage. Wanna change targets? Have fun flailing the right stick around until you can target the right enemy for a split second. Targeting the correct enemy? Make sure never to touch the right stick or you're in danger of switching your target when you don’t want to. This means putting up with some absolute ass camera angles where nothing is visible, just so your battle target doesn’t change. We are far past the point of excuses. By no means is it ever okay to not have a separate button for this kind of thing.
I started the game on Normal mode and I had to switch to Classic mode about a third into the game. I don’t know how the game expects you to constantly switch between party members in order to build enough ATB to actually use their skills. Classic mode had party members build small amounts of ATB on their own, so it felt like a small bandaid on a battle system where I was always frantically trying to manage all party members’ real time control AND skills. There’s just too much going on at once.
I don’t know if there’s a proper aggro system, but if there is, it is completely broken. In my experience it felt like aggro was always drawn on the character that the player is controlling. Barret, who was supposed to be the “tank” never successfully occupies the enemies that are constantly stunlocking me. To circumvent getting stunlocked by annoying enemies every two seconds, you just have to switch to playing as another party member before enemy aggro switches to that new character. I love Aerith’s play style but she works horribly with the aggro system. She's a glass cannon who casts wards in order to set up her powerful hits. This takes time, and is frustrating to pull off when all of the enemies start charging you even if you're still setting up.

The character dialogue could be cringe at times and other times incomprehensible. Sometimes the characters just say really existential things out of nowhere, they act like they know characters they’ve never met, and act like they know plot points that the player doesn’t know. This is particularly bad with the female characters, as so much of their dialogue feels like fanservice. You can tell that no women were in the room when the dialogue was being written, and their models being animated. But the worst offenders of all are the villains. I understand that it’s hard to write compelling antagonists. But hearing Don Corneo literally calling himself a villain in a monologue and Heidegger and Prof. Hojo doing the most cringeworthy evil laughs made me groan and roll my eyes.

All plot points are described in the most vague terms known to man. “The Ancients can lead us to the Promised Land” means absolutely nothing. As someone who never played the og ff7, I have no idea who Zach even is. And who is Sephiroth? We see him all the time but the game never tells us why he does what he does, what he’s even doing, or how any of the party members know who he is. I liked the story with Shinra but it absolutely blew up into something incomprehensible as the game progressed. There were plenty of other incomprehensible moments too. The mission with Jessie had you run into a motorcycle dude who never establishes who he is, and his dialogue is basically gibberish. When the plate falls, a cutscene shows this weird cat thing that never shows up again. I want to reiterate how unfriendly this is to newcomers.

Each main character is basically an archetype, and Cloud’s love triangle is cringe and minimizes the actual important themes the game is trying to convey. Character design for the main characters (& Sephiroth) is good but every single other NPC looks and acts like they’re on PS2. The villain character designs (except for Sephiroth) look so grotesque and not in an intentional or good way. The way Heidegger’s mouth moves and his stiff arms raise when he does his evil laugh is so pathetic and low quality. Most side characters also look very unpolished. They have no distinct art style to them, unlike Dragon Quest, for example.

Side quests were so incredibly dull. I did the first two batches of three sidequests but when it came time to do the lategame remaining 9 quests I just said nope and continued on. Couldn’t take it anymore. There was no fast travel within towns, and the level design was incredibly linear and dull. There was SO much padding with the amount of ladders I climbed, tight spaces I ducked under or squeezed through, or just moments where you have to walk at a snail’s pace. There’s a scene at the Shinra HQ building where you have to climb 59 sets of stairs and the higher you get, the slower your character moves. Your run function is taken away from you and the whole sequence took multiple minutes of your party just panting and complaining. I don't care if it's an "iconic gag", it takes up multiple minutes in real time of me doing absolutely nothing.

Traversal took way too long and you can really tell that this game is stretching out 5 hours of a PS1 game. There were actually only a few major plot points and the rest of the game was just you moving from place to place, getting sidetracked or roadblocked on the way. It’s not like I spent 100 hours on the game, more like 30. But everything still felt too long. It felt like a walking simulator.

The ending made no sense to me and I think the “fate”/time travel stuff is so corny. It’s the reason why I stopped playing Dragon Quest 11 after the second act.


I played this game on PS4 Pro and it ran very well. Not only is it a reprehensible decision for Square Enix to cut a PS1 game up into 3 ~30hr pieces and sell them for $60-$70 each, and force players to upgrade to PS5 to continue the remake trilogy, but the fact that this game was advertised as a remake makes this all the more evil. I am fine with Square Enix reimagining the FF7 story and universe, but I am not fine with advertising it as a newcomer-friendly remake where players can experience the world of FF7 for the first time. There were so many details that made absolutely no sense to me, and it was painfully obvious that this game survives off of nostalgiabait. If you're a FF7 veteran looking to experience this game in a new way, by all means give it a go. But if you were a FF7 newcomer like me, please, DO NOT START WITH THIS GAME. This is an incomplete product that absolutely depends on the player knowing the original PS1 game front to back.

This is probably the best story I've ever encountered in any video game. It's ambitious and unafraid to compromise its message, yet it's also broad. Spira, Yevon, Sin, etc aren't one-to-one comparisons with any real world religions or minority groups, but they can be applied to many under a large umbrella with the themes of truth and acceptance ringing regardless.

The game's quirks like the voice acting and the tropical aesthetic make it a one of a kind experience. We're never going to get a game like this ever again.

Yuna is in the running for one of my favorite characters of all time. The party members as a whole were excellent. The argument between Wakka and Rikku after finding out Rikku is Al Bhed was super on-the-nose but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Kimahri was the obvious weak link. He didn't detract from the story at all, but I don't see why he needed to exist. His role in the gameplay was unfocused, and Lulu could have easily taken up the role as Yuna's first guardian and very little in the story would have changed. I actually thought he was some kind of temporary party member when he first joined. The Ronso in general were one of the least fleshed out parts of the story.

It didn't help that Mount Gagazet/The Great Plain/Zanarkand Ruins was one of the most bloated and grueling parts of the game. Which leads into the game's biggest problem: the actual gameplay.

Yeah, the gameplay is kinda trash. Whichever dev decided to throw an entire novella of blitzball instructions in the player's face and then proceeded to force them to play a match in the beginning of the game deserves jail time. The Sphere Grid is incredibly linear, so it's essentially just leveling up normally except you're forced to do it manually. The temple puzzles were boring as hell. So many bosses have the most annoying gimmicks. There were some exceptions like Spherimorph, which relied on pattern recognition. But many bosses simply inflicted a bullshit status on the player, when they have no way of knowing what it is or how to work around it on a blind playthrough. Stone, zombie, berserk...boss battles can take up to 45 minutes and a lot of it is spent waiting. God forbid you run from random encounters, because that will bring you behind the level curve. It's not a super tough game if you go out of your way to do the side content and get some good items for Rikku. But if you just want to experience the story without major roadblocks between story sections, you will absolutely suffer.

But even with all that said, experiencing the story is an absolute MUST. Even if you watch a 12-hour youtube video instead of playing the game. It is truly unforgettable.