while we are racing against time to stop the sector 7 plate from falling, there are no fewer than 4 cutscenes that stop the action in its tracks for characters to have slow, meaningless conversations about nothing while the timer is counting down. it plays like two different studios made this game -- one for cutscenes and one for gameplay -- and they never talked to each other during development. the tonal disconnect is crazy. some of the worst cutscenes in square enix history and trust me i've played them all.

as for the gameplay, the first 2/3 of the game was pleasantly surprising and decent. i liked the battle system and thought the new side characters were boring but at least tolerable. from the train graveyard onwards this becomes a soul-crushing hallway simulator from hell. wtf happened? why are we elongating meaningless areas from the original into boring 2-hour segments? what does any of this add to the original?