If I could describe this game to the best of my ability, it's kind of like you're riding a bike down a hill at full speed. As soon as you realize you're having a blast, all of a sudden a metal pipe clotheslines you and knocks all of you and both of your shoes off.
It opens to one of the most enthralling prologues to a game I've played of recent, with fun gigantic battles and fantastic orchestras that vibrate your nuts off. It's epic and mature, and I really enjoyed the more political aspect that the story of this one leaned into. It just unfortunately has horrific pacing.
The character's talk so slowly and there's so much exposition that's drawled out in explanations rather than shown. It sure as Hell makes the combat and boss sections way more exciting, but the abrupt fall into the most boring, endless MMORPG fetch quests and lore dumps made me speedrun depression, especially near the end. When it's finally time for that sick Kaiju battle theme song to start playing again, it's like getting cold water splashed on your face to wake you up. By far that is the worst thing about this game.
The combat for the most part is fun and flashy, but it gets so repetitive down the line. It's watered down and fairly bare bones for an RPG. It was okay, but I found myself wanting a bit more to play around with because there's so little powers you can use. The plot linearity didn't necessarily bother me at all because I feel like we've been getting assaulted by really shitty open-worlds lately. The areas are still gigantic and it was nice to take in the beautiful scenery for a change.
All of that being said, the story still goes pretty hard despite the pacing issues. The emotional beats did hit for me and Clive is a very refreshing protagonist for this series. You can tell that they put a lot of care in nurturing his relationships with the other characters to help bolster the themes, but I do wish that that care extended to some others. In my opinion, Jill is just yet another example of Square's inability to write women because she's basically cardboard. Honestly, a ton of the random as shit side characters get more development than her through the side quests, which is very weird.
Overall, it's good but it can be a bit of slog to get to the end. I don't think I'd ever replay it, but if I did, most of it is getting skipped in chunks.
It opens to one of the most enthralling prologues to a game I've played of recent, with fun gigantic battles and fantastic orchestras that vibrate your nuts off. It's epic and mature, and I really enjoyed the more political aspect that the story of this one leaned into. It just unfortunately has horrific pacing.
The character's talk so slowly and there's so much exposition that's drawled out in explanations rather than shown. It sure as Hell makes the combat and boss sections way more exciting, but the abrupt fall into the most boring, endless MMORPG fetch quests and lore dumps made me speedrun depression, especially near the end. When it's finally time for that sick Kaiju battle theme song to start playing again, it's like getting cold water splashed on your face to wake you up. By far that is the worst thing about this game.
The combat for the most part is fun and flashy, but it gets so repetitive down the line. It's watered down and fairly bare bones for an RPG. It was okay, but I found myself wanting a bit more to play around with because there's so little powers you can use. The plot linearity didn't necessarily bother me at all because I feel like we've been getting assaulted by really shitty open-worlds lately. The areas are still gigantic and it was nice to take in the beautiful scenery for a change.
All of that being said, the story still goes pretty hard despite the pacing issues. The emotional beats did hit for me and Clive is a very refreshing protagonist for this series. You can tell that they put a lot of care in nurturing his relationships with the other characters to help bolster the themes, but I do wish that that care extended to some others. In my opinion, Jill is just yet another example of Square's inability to write women because she's basically cardboard. Honestly, a ton of the random as shit side characters get more development than her through the side quests, which is very weird.
Overall, it's good but it can be a bit of slog to get to the end. I don't think I'd ever replay it, but if I did, most of it is getting skipped in chunks.
2 Comments
@_YALP I have to agree. I think most of the FFs kind of fall into that twist in some way, but the ones where the entire cast just being made up of a happy band of random dumbasses at least softens that blow for me. This one was trying so hard to lean into the "maturity" that it somehow felt both edgy and hollow, which made it come off as more comical in hindsight. The post-credits scene is like a joke that they just HAD to make.
_YALP
4 months ago