This was a great improvement over the first game which was already very good itself. The game really treats you like you have already played the first one so it very quickly starts adding more unit types and complex mechanics so the challenge is much greater (even on casual, I was fighting for my life in the last few stages). Having more diverse level design and objectives is a great thing in a game like this and kept me hooked plaything through the 34 mission campaign, which is also much longer than the original. You also get to play as the COs from the other armies for lots of the game, plus there are more additions so you have some fun different playstyles. The remake is very good and I love the art design of the COs and the map (I still don't like the battle animations though).

A lot of the appeal of this game to me is the vibe, I really like the art and the concept is really up my alley. In practice though it’s a bit of a mixed back even though I did like the game. It is split into two parts: managing the cult and a pretty standard rogue like action section. The mix is pretty good, with things from each part feeding into the other to make you feel like you are always making progress, but neither of them really blew me away on their own. If I had to choose I think I like the cult management part a bit more, it was just complex enough to be enjoyable but I felt like there were so many mechanics in it that you really didn’t need so it felt a bit bloated. The action combat rogue like part was fine but didn’t blow me away, I ended up just going to easy because I didn’t find it enjoyable enough to want to play long enough to really master it. A good interesting game that I liked but was never really in love with, great concept though.

One of the most soulless products I have ever purchased. A spit in the face to previous fans of the franchise. Rather than delivering what made Outlast, well, Outlast, Trials instead is a live service monstrosity fit with the usual trappings. Leveling systems, skill trees, classes (???), gear, cosmetics, roadmaps and microtransactions. I had bought under the pretense it was a more story-focused affair with coop elements, but my heart sank as all the soulless slop live service bullshit slowly crawled on my screen.

I could not even enjoy this with friends, the easiest layup imaginable. The AI is dumb as bricks and the mission structure is lazy and repetitive. I only wish that Red Barrels had taken some inspiration from Hazelight's co-op ventures and delivered a strong co-op experience that was reminiscent of the previous title's core values. There are elements here that could work in a story-driven co-op experience, instead, they are squandered for inane tasks or aggravating mission objectives. Additionally, the flow of the game is bizarre as you have 2 separate loading periods, 1 simply flourishing for the mission. It's during these glimpses that Outlast Trials almost parodies its own franchise, with hallucinated enemies shoving their cock in your face or disemboweling themselves in front of you. It's frankly fucking embarrassing. It's as though a completely different company has created this game, there is zero nuance or reasoning for this to occur, and exists solely for the cheapest of shock values. It's just intermittent flashing scenes of violence that your player character is hallucinating before being thrust into another loading screen.


The state of this franchise is disappointing. This game isn't even scary, they couldn't even do that right. I hope Red Barrels got the money they wanted from this blatant cash-grab. If this is the direction of the franchise moving forward you can count me out.

Embarrassing.

I very much enjoyed playing this game. Great combat, great graphics ( I played on balanced ), incredible soundtrack, and found the story to be fine.

Combat is probably what I loved the most in this game, parrying and dodging feels very satisfying, and the final few bosses can genuinely be hard.

Soundtrack is incredible, hanging around the camp and hearing the music just feels very nostalgic for some reason.

I liked the level designs, but felt that it peaked with the first area ( Eidos 7 ). Character designs are great, and I love Eve's outfits.

I played on balanced mode, and while the levels are mostly 60fps, in the main hub and in like two boss areas, the frame drops can be pretty noticeable.

Story is fine, but a bit on the shorter side. Can definitely complete it in about 10-15 hours.

How do you manage to only have 3 low quality servers, increase the combined file size 10x, and have such dogwater connection issues in early 2000's PS2 titles? Either there was no QA work done at all, or the studio failed to even secure QA workers. Regardless, this is completely unacceptable and falls into the norm of modern games being ruined by unnecessary issues that can be easily fixed. Aspyr, you do not deserve profits for tarnishing the holy grails of Star Wars games and being disgustingly money hungry; you only deserve shame and humiliation. Be better.

This one is so tough for me, and honestly, there is no way I can ever be 100% unbiased. Let's start from the top. OG FF7 is one of my favorite video games of all time. Between that and MGS it is what got me into gaming in the first place, and I can still remember sneaking up late at night to play more of these games on the PS1.

So when a remake of this was announced, I was obviously nervous, and oddly enough, the first Remake game did almost nothing to squash that even though I really did like it. It was clear they were going with a bold, new, different direction, and despite my squabbles, I couldn't help be just beyond in awe with what they were trying to accomplish, but it really felt like something I'd need to wait and see the whole way through before I could give a full opinion on.

Another game later, I still feel kinda the same way? I really do like this game, along with remake, I think they're both spectacular. I also think, they will NEVER live up or surpass the OG game to me, and that's okay too.

I do think this game is too bloated. It's also way too story light until the last chunk of the game. Really we don't get major story stuff until chapter 12 (though it starts getting better in eight).

I think the side quests are improved from Remake, but still not great here.

Also for the love of god, I like the mini games, but not EVERYTHING needs to be a mini game. Some sections were an actual slog cause of that.

The open world while solid and fun, does nothing that hasn't been done before, and can't match some of the top tier open worlds to me (RDR2, Horizon FW).

What this game excels at is the world, and character building. It's tremendous. It makes you really fall in love with every one of these characters, and shines a light one more time on Aerith, one of the greatest female characters in video game history.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with this game, even more than Remake (even though I think Remake does somethings better). I think this one will grow on me over time, and maybe even increase in score, and who knows, maybe after the third game, I'll learn to love them all even more.

After sitting on this game for over a month now, my opinion on this game has only lessened as I ruminate over and over about the 60+ hours I spent with the game.

Of those 60-ish hours, I would say around 10-15 of those hours were moments where narrative was actually occurring, and it was fucking good. When plot was happening, when it was channelling the game it's meant to be a retelling of, the game is fantastic. Cutscene direction is really strong, voice acting is great and it has some of the best lip-sync i've seen in a Japanese developed title.

It's the other 40-50 hours where the game fumbles, and where my mind wanders to the most when thinking about this game. Starting off the game, I quite enjoyed the first area, it was nicely designed and it looked great and it had good environment diversity. I felt compelled to complete everything in the area's activity checklist. However, the more areas that were introduced - the more burned I became completing the same mindless activities, and the areas became more and more tedious to traverse. I was fully ready to stop doing the open world activities by the time I was hit with the 1-2 Punch of Gongaga and Cosmo Canyon. Two areas that had the most tedious and annoying traversal mechanics and really made getting around the map feel like a chore. When I had got to the final area I completely mainlined, feeling further emboldened by the game vomiting 15 more side quests on you.

In terms of the side activities, I do find the reception to them to be fascinating. It's very clear the game is apeing the design of other open-world titles, but it's not like it's doing this content any better. As much as the gaming public lambasts "radio tower" map clearing activities, or "lazy Ubisoft-esque" side content, this game is doing all of that? So why is it not a problem here? It's never actually been a problem, but that's a tale for another day.

What the side-content does the best is give the party more areas to shine, for every quest theres 1 party member that is actively invested in the completion of your side quest objective. It gives you a snippet of their character, a much welcomed addition. While there are moments within the side content that I found enjoyable (Queen's Blood is fantastic), I found that alot of the minigames and stuff to not be as high of a quality as I'd hoped. Alot of the minigames felt like maybe 4 people in the studio worked on them, theres not like an equal level of development time and care between them all, so alot just come off as randomly thrown together so that they can hit some kind of internal metric of having X amount of minigames. I couldn't help but think of Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth when playing through the minigames. RGG are the masters of minigames in my opinion, and 90% of the time those minigames are there for you to be distracted with. You're able to go off on your own and on your own volition interact with the minigames. But in Rebirth, minigames are shoved down your throat left right and center to mask the fact that there isn't really a lot happening in this section of Final Fantasy 7's narrative. I fully believe that a lot of the minigames should not be integrated within the story, even for areas where it's intentionally lax and they want you to "have fun". That was a problem I actually had with Infinite Wealth, it constantly dragged you away from the story in order to interact with the big minigames it had implemented. They should have all been relegated to the Golden Saucer.

Now, the narrative. When there was actually stuff happening I was pogging and soying. The first couple hours were great, and then there were sparce moments here and there where I had fun and then the game ended. The ending left ALOT to be desired, and I was ultimately left with more questions than answers - which was quite disappointing as I had bought the game to get those answers. I wanted to see what they were laying the groundwork for in Remake, and I still have yet to see where they are going. There are flashes where the game is showing it's hand, but it's presented so ambiguously it just made me frustrated. The final chapter of the game had it's ups and downs, and then I was presented with yet another boss fight against Sephiroth and then it was done.

I don't know what they are going to do with the third game. They can't get away with "nothing happening" in the final act clearly, so I wonder if they're going to focus on the inclusion of inane minigames that completely destroy the pacing of the narrative. I'm at the point where I believe that's probably whats going to happen. I really hope the final game knocks it out of the park, but like are we really going to end on the 5th fight with Sephiroth with One Winged Angel playing for the 14th time? I don't mind games where the primary focus is just vibing out and hanging around the characters, I just don't feel like that was marketed appropriately. Had I known this game was going to be a bit more primarily slice-of-life I would've set my expectations as such - but I understand that adapting this section of the original game was going to be a bit difficult.

Random points I never really mentioned:
- Combat is good, love it
- Pre-rendered scenes are gorgeous
- Queen's Blood is amazing
- Golden Saucer and Costa Del Sol are fucking beautiful, GS in particular I really loved just being in
- Party member AI is fucking stupid, I don't like the overreliance on Materia in order to get them to do certain actions.
- AP economy is wayyyyy too small, I finished the game and still had HP Up materia I got at the beginning of the game that still hadn't levelled up to the max
- Folio menu was ass
- Potions became useless within the first hour of play. What the fuck? I can't believe that, genuinely, probably the weirdest thing in the game. I became outleveled for a base potion within the first HOUR OF THE GAME.
- Random shit not being implemented, like why can't my chocobo jump? Would get annoyed being on a cliff and having to run allll the way down a hill path instead of just being able to jump and glide so they can have area-specific chocobo gimicks


Thats all, rant over. Very polarizing game for me.