After sinking more than a hundred hours into Rebirth, I know the last thing I should do is try to bite off more Final Fantasy. I've already had too much, I'm bloated on chocobos and moogles and nearly ready to burst, and yet I've been eyeballing Final Fantasy IV and thinking "I can handle it." Comparatively speaking, 23 hours of gameplay is light, downright brisk. Rebirth's after dinner mint... Why shouldn't I indulge?

Well, back-to-back negative reviews from mutuals - both of which abandoned the game - should be reason enough for me to pass, at least for the time being.

It's so over.

Or is it? I'm Weatherby, when have I ever listened to anyone about how bad a game might be? Especially for a game I already paid my money for. The cellophane on this unopened Final Fantasy Chronicles is coming off, baby!

We're so back!

It's probably worth pointing out up front that by going with the Chronicles version of the game, I am effectively playing the real Final Fantasy IV, which originally released stateside on the SNES as a port of Japan's easy mode. For babies. I'm not a baby, how hard can this version of the game be?

Turns out very, at least in fits and bursts. Final Fantasy IV is a very inconsistent game in a lot of ways, and I think a lot of this inconsistency is born from the unique space it occupies in the overarching trajectory of the franchise. The SNES allowed Square to do so much more than what they previously accomplished with the NES trilogy, especially in regard to story, but a lot of FFIV's mechanical features feel as though the game has one foot firmly rooted a generation behind. Things like a highly restrictive inventory is just unnecessary thanks to the SNES' expanded memory space, and the encounter rate is just as bonkers as it was on the NES, sometimes sending you from one daunting battle to the next with only a mere tile separating them.

Guest characters, something Final Fantasy II leaned on with its rotating fourth party slot, are commonplace in the early half of FFIV, and a some of them feel more like a hindrance, resulting in a lot of stretches where you need to nanny idiots like Edward, who has no useful abilities, low health, and straight up runs off screen when you try to heal him up. Likewise, you'll occasionally be gifted with guest characters that are too good, creating this pendulum swing of the game being "too annoying" and "too easy."

This combination of antiquated design elements and inconsistent party composition makes the early game a drag, and it's no wonder I ditched the GBA version around Mt. Ordeals back when I originally played it in 2005.

It's so over.

Final Fantasy IV's story also struggles in the early half of the game and spends a bit too long meandering around. It is interesting to play this right off the heels of Final Fantasy III as both games feature numerous character sacrifices, though the greater scope of FFIV means you'll get to spend more time with them rather than coming upon each character briefly before they like, chuck themselves into a furnace or whatever. Each death feels meaningful, which is why it's a bit upsetting that FFIV walks back most of them, sheepishly shrugging and going "I don't know, they lived I guess."

Thankfully, both the story and gameplay eventually find their focus, and once FFIV dials things in, I found that I was starting to have a really good time with the game. Turns out a stable party of well-rounded characters who share a clear and common goal is just what you need to get me invested, even if it may not address every single problem I had with the game up to that point.

By the time the party awakens the Lunar Whale and takes a trip up to the god damned moon, I was fully in it, and I loved the way the game handles the reveal of its true antagonist, Zeromus, who is less a singular consciousness driven by focused malice and more representative of the game's greater themes concerning good and evil, its presence in all men, and the cyclical nature of war and peace. I am a noted Necron defender, so the idea that the party has to do battle with something more representative of a thought or manifestation of man's own nature is my kind of thing.

Also, he's got a sick battle theme.

We're so back

Unfortunately, actually fighting Zeromus is another matter entirely. I thought the Cloud of Darkness was a motherfucker, but this might be the most I've struggled with a final boss in any Final Fantasy game. Apparently this guy can cast Meteo, Holy, Bio, AND Flare, but you'd never know it because he spends 90% of the fight spamming Big Bang over and over again. The solution here is to let Rydia stay dead as all of her spells will result in an immediate counterattack that operates separately from the fixed timer that dictates Big Bang. This also buys you better healing as Rosa only has to split Curaja between four characters instead of five. At the 11th hour, Final Fantasy IV deigned it necessary to saddle me with more dead weight, and the constant run back through several floors with high encounter rates and ~ten minutes of mashing through mandatory dialog is a steep price for failure, which unfortunately sucked a lot of the wind out from Final Fantasy IV's ending.

it's so over. literally, i am done playing this video game

Rating games in a series can be a little tricky, but I think I've more or less settled on a curve when it comes to Final Fantasy. I gave the original game a 3.5/5, which seems a bit high when you consider how approachable, engaging, and bombastic later titles are. All qualities I would assign to FFIV even if I think it spends a little too much time playing around in the protoplasmic puddle left behind by the previous three entries. That's why it's simultaneously the easiest of these four for me to sit down with, yet it's also a 3/5.

Maybe one day I'll check out the SNES version. I am genuinely curious if the easier difficulty curve results in a more evenly paced game, or if it simply makes combat dull and predictable.

Anyway, the next game has a protagonist name Butz. We're so back.

Holy fxxk.
I knew I would like this game because everything it sells on paper is up my alley. Cardbuilding game mixed with Visual Novel where choices matter? That was right in my field of interest. However, not only did this game succeed on those fronts, but it surpassed all of my expectations rocketing it to what would be a pretty standard 3.5 or 4 to a solid 5/5 and I have a lot of strong feelings why.

Firstly, I want to start by saying, this game is not the same all the way through, it throws some curveballs, both in narrative and gameplay senses, now it just so happens those oddballs (resource management and political sim) are both in my wheelhouse. I say this because I think this could turn away quite a few potential players. However, this is the only major issue I can find in the game, everything else is subjectively-based (such as gameplay and art-style) and just are good for my preferences (even this "knack" in itself is something I actively seek in my games).

This game impresses me in a few ways, to not expose too much about the game I just want to talk about the aspects I think made me come to my rating.

The Story is fxxking great. It's nothing too absurd or outlandish, but it is quite unique among VNs for telling it's story through a combination of flashbacks between two "realms" of reality, all while playing out the story of the game, with a few unique twists and fun reveals that are not all crazy insane or anything, but gratifying, albeit sometimes predictable. The Writing is similar in this aspect in both being a very unique style of writing that focuses on characters and interactions over exposition, which is a quite positive thing for me. At no time did I feel overwhelmed by text, but it also was super prevalent (hence the genre) in a way that was very engaging and endearing to the story and choices made. This also applies to the entourage of Characters that make up the game, you have unique interactions with each that fuel the story, none of them feel secondary or wasteful placements, there are even some that my run didn't pertain to, but look to have far more engaging moments and unique interactions if quarreled with beyond the scope of my run. This is all-wrapped in a mature (but not overly-so) story that encapsulates some really dark and light themes in a way that wasn't too jarring in my time with the title and really helped it be unique in how it approached difficulty topics. As a person of the LGBTQ+ variety, I also found representation in this game incredibly tasteful and refreshing opposed to the very cookie-cutter representations in other games. Overall, story has a lot, and I mean a LOT, of great moments for its 7-to-8 hour run that really had me engaged the entire time. I will note that one future playthroughs I'm unsure if I will have the same experience as the first run, but there is enough content and decisions you can take to vary the story.

The Gameplay will be mostly subjective. The game consists around a resource-managment deck-creating (or deckbuilding card-crafting) basis that sprinkles in relationship management and political sim. It's really weird to try and define all that the game does, but think about it as a choices-matter visual novel with lite resource-managment and a sprinkle of political strategy sim in the secondary half. The systems here are simple but effective with a lot of variety in how you approach them, from crafting cards that let you pick unique dialogue-choices to literally digging up dirt on people to then harass them with in a political race to become a leader, it does a lot of odd quirky things and I only really felt it disconnected at a few chapter intros, but not enough to dissuade the new or old mechanics. It is clearly thought-out and while not "balanced", it offers a unique way to approach each run in a unique way, until your 3-4 runs in, but honestly for what this game is, I'm shocked it can do more than one and have and uniqueness between runs in the first place. Note I say this after only one run, so I'm not certain on that case, however, even if it were only a one-run game, it's still a 5/5 on that basis as the gameplay and story speaks for itself.

TLDR: All of this is to say, it's a really refreshing take on a Visual-Novel game, and if your looking to try the genre but might not like the simplicity of a majority of the titles this might pique your interest. Overall an amazingly, lovingly-crafted title with a fantastic story and an amazing experience through and through.

I absolutely respect Ico for the influence it had on artistic adventure and exploration games along with Shadow of the Colossus. I really wanted to like it, as Shadow of the Colossus is one of my favorite games ever.

Unfortunately I hated Ico.

The loose controls, weird camera, and blurry, eye-straining graphics with way too much bloom gave me an actual headache. I just could not continue playing when the game had made me physically unwell in the first half hour.

There's nothing particularly original delivered by Dead Space's synthesis of Event Horizon, Alien, Half-Life, System Shock, Resident Evil, and the many recurrent elements that make up the genre of deep space horror — but when a piece of genre work is executed this well, there doesn't need to be.

What Dead Space does deliver is a dense, eerie, exhilarating, and often frightening piece of sci-fi horror that, even as it riffs off the genre's mainstays, manages to avoid falling within their shadows. This is genre work at its finest: a set of familiar pieces polished to a mirror shine and placed in perfect configuration. As a longtime fan of this particular subgenre of horror, it's one of the best games I've played in a long time.

I can't think of the last time I played a game where I mulled over its themes like this one. I do this all the time for great movies (I did this for The Zone of Interest a couple of months ago), but I don't think I've seen a story come out of a game that fully utilized its medium and was so artistically unique, quite like this one. It throws a LOT at the wall, and while not all of it sticks gameplay-wise, I still recommend people try this out. It's short (almost too short), cheap, and it'll gnaw at your brain hours after beating it.

Don't mistake me. This is a HIGH 7, and don't be surprised if it's bumped up by the end of the year, as I can only see myself appreciating this game more from here.

Thoroughly mediocre flight combat. Sluggish and unsatisfying handling. The PC port barely functions on modern hardware. Annoying escort missions. Battle Above Taloraan has a random chance of just crashing to desktop upon completion due to some longstanding script bugs in the mission. Downing AT-ATs is j a n k. Draw distance?

The only reason this ever received any praise is because it let you fly an X-Wing without fucking around in DOS. Brb, I'm going to go fuck around in DOS.

Just skip to the second entry. The OG is a historical curiosity.