what a weird fucking game! just really really strange. obviously and easily the worst of the ps1 ff games but still what a fascinating little thing this is and to be honest i had a lot of fun. the plot is kind of incoherent and shit just... Happens all the fuckin time but there are some story beats which are genuinely really effective, i grew to really care about squall as he showed more sides of himself than just broody late 90s teen and the romance at the center of the story is pretty good. the draw and junction systems are a really big mixed bag, on one hand its fun to minmax your stats but on the other hand it makes some fights drag on way too long and it incentivizes never using items or spells in a way i dont really like. still tho i did way more bonus content in this game than either 7 or 9 for some reason and i enjoyed my time with it, definitely not a game for everyone but i think its worth checking out at least once

as someone who grew up with this game, this is one of those games that i can pick up and play no matter where i am and it'll always make me feel better. ive got rose-tinted goggles of playing this on the way to school over and over and over again, but when i take those off, theres definitely something seriously wrong here. this game is super janky. the controls are awful, the shmup sections come out of basically nowhere, the super ball is a weird-ass power up, all of the sprites being so tiny on a little shitty green dot matrix screen sucks ass etc. that said i still get a really warm feeling when i play this game, it just makes me happy :)

i'm kinda bummed this games never gonna get touched again because theres really so much potential here, give this game different writers and a different direction and it could have come out looking so much more flatteringly

some thoughts from my twitter:
"theres an awkward and shivering earnestness to mass effect andromeda that i find extremely compelling
it kneecaps itself often by trying to play cool or pretend it doesnt care but it does care and if it showed that more i think more people would be able to see what i see in it
me3 is a Far better game than me:a and they share a Lot of issues but for some reason i think i feel lighter towards the latter"

jaal is honestly one of the best companions in a bioware game so theres that

boy it really sucks that this games legacy will always be held down by that awful fucking ending because what is here is pretty damn good!

my consistent note with this game is that a lot of the best stuff here is intangibly linked with a lot of the worst. filled to the brim with the best and worst ideas of the mass effect franchise

edit: okay so im sorry to say that the more i think about this game the less i like it
dont get me wrong there are some really great moments a bunch of highlights for the series are packed in this game but man so much of this game feels out of place or wrong
i think an apt comparison for this game (and the trilogy) is that this is the return of the jedi to me2's empire strikes back, its not bad but everything that made the one before it so good is either dumbed down or viewed as a mistake and no one really knows how to wrap this thing up so they just throw shit at the wall and hope it sticks
again dont get me wrong this is a good game but it definitely sticks out and not always flatteringly