The job system took a little time for me to get used to, but even before it did, I could tell that I was going to love this game.

I love the Moogles. I love Gilgamesh. I love Boko. I love Ghido the Turtle. I love the dances you can partake in at the bars. I love how Exdeath turns himself into a splinter. I love how there are so many hard enemies and bosses in here throughout the game, and then by the end, you have Bahamut and you can just sweep the floor with him. But most importantly, I now fully understand why Nobuo Uemetsu is considered a musical god. His score in here is simply incredible (it's really nice they give you the option to change between both the new and old soundtrack, because I love both).

Even if this isn't the first Final Fantasy game I've played, I feel like I've finally (lol) been fully introduced to what the series has to offer, and I'm happy to say that I'm going to stick around to see more. And based on what I've heard for as long as I've known about video games, the next one I play chronologically is going to be even better...

Perhaps I'm coming at it wrong for saying this, but its times like this that I struggle with writing game reviews.

I find that so many of them, while informative, come at critique from an objectivist point of view, always talking about the mechanics of a game or whether the design of a game functions well or not, and coming to a conclusion based on the mechanical conclusions of a game's worth. And those are definitely important qualities.

But when it comes to other artistic mediums, such as film or painting, I find that a lot of that mechanical approach is not considered the be-all, end-all for critique, and other elements, such as your emotional response to a piece, are considered just as important to write about. And I don't really see a lot of that in games journalism or reviews. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right place, but it's a common occurrence that I constantly see when people are discussing a game's merit.

All this to say, there's definitely stuff you can criticize in here and I'd agree with you. Some of the story and side missions feel a little repetitive after awhile, and in the case of the latter, the rewards you get for completing them aren't necessarily as exciting as you'd expect. The story, while still great, didn't hit me as hard as the first game's story did. And there are some minor things that I liked, such as the character bios and being able to replay podcasts, that do not return for this game, which is a real shame.

But in spite of all that, I just really love swinging through New York City. Especially when the sun is setting. It just looks so beautiful, and I can't get enough of it. I haven't been able to do a lot of travelling since the pandemic, so this feels like the next best thing to exploring a big city. There's really nothing else like it, for me at least, and perhaps that's what I'm trying to get at. There are parts of this game's design philosophy that I can see warranting a 45-minute video essay on why it's "a part of a bigger problem with video games", but I really can't see myself wanting to agree with that video, because I still get so much enjoyment out of this game, just like I did with the first one. The AAA video game scene is starting to look unsustainable, and I continue to find myself more interested in smaller games or classics that I haven't gotten around to playing yet. But if Insomniac keeps making Spider-Man games, I'll still try to stick around for them.