Despite how much marketing this game seemed to have such as sponsored streams by people who aren't even in the anime space, a demo, and so many ads (unless I was targeted because I frequent the DBZ side of the internet), and this being a full multimedia event with an anime, this was probably the hardest time I've ever had finding a game on release day and not because I think the game is flying off the shelves. Amazon had the order delayed to the following Monday, I couldn't find a copy and any video game carrying department store like Wal Mart or Target within a 45 minute drive and even fuckin pawngamestop didn't have copies but Stellar Blade apparently is in abundance. I ended up double dipping and grabbing a digital copy (praise be to whatever god allowed this game to be only 20GB) while the amazon order got situated because goddamn it, I was looking forward to this. I think this is one of those underproduced copy situations but it gave me time to read the manga before getting into this.

Akira Toriyama's work was one of my main gateways into anime back in the day, with DBZ's ocean dub because I'm that fucking old. His artstyle is something I will always enjoy its why I played games like Chrono Trigger and Dragon Quest that to this day I think is such a standout in the genre. I'm glad another of his works is getting adapted in game form. I think his artstyle translated well in game, especially in terms of the bots (the machines you use throughout the game). That man really loved drawing vehicles and machines and it shows, especially since Sand Land's inception was because he just wanted to draw an old man with a tank which grew into something he never intended it to. Yes some characters I could see the "building blocks" and traits shared from his other work (I will always see Mr. Satan when I see that long square jaw) but his creature designs are also in full effect with giant cats with sabre teeth, dinosaurs with weird tails and prominent back and head spines, large toothed Pteranodons etc, they stand out even if the designs in game get re-used quite a bit with as much as a pallet swap and maybe one slight addition like a head piece to differentiate unless its a boss. There was also a design that was outright used in OG Dragon Ball that I was happy to see. There isn't as much to say about the style of the environments other than they look good and accurately reflect what they're named, Sand Land is very much a land of sand but I am grateful that it is not the only type of scenery available all throughout the game.

The story of the first half of the game mostly follows the manga, two demons venture out with an old man in a tank to find water, but some parts have had their order changed or elongated and there were brand new things added to what I assume more organically bridge into the second half which is entirely new. As I said in the intro, I read the manga but I did not watch the anime which I'm sure this new stuff is covered there. One of the notable new things added to the first half is the new party member, Ann. Originally it was just Rao, Beelzebub (who you play as) and Thief but she joins as the resident gearhead and a more organic style reason why the characters can get more bots because the manga was ONLY the tank. Well that is technically not true. Rao had a car but in the manga when it gets ruined it doesn't get fixed unlike in the game. I did enjoy the main group and think Ann was a great addition, though I can't say they aren't predictable as characters. Aside from a couple of the villains, the ones you spend the most of the time fighting against, I can't say I share the same feelings towards. They are just as basic, not that its a bad thing but it leads to some disengaging of interest in the narrative when I can predict every single plot beat introduced in the post manga content. I'm not saying I was expecting some Yoko Taro or Kojima level narrative and Sand land's is by no means bad, it just didn't do enough to make the predictability engaging. What you think is going to happen after reading the synopsis, is more than likely what will happen. The voice acting is hit or miss with I think Rao having the worst of it which is bad because he is one of the main characters with more of the important lines. I feel like they were going for the "battle hardened, tired old man has seen some shit" route but he is mostly so monotone it comes off as disinterested and doesn't match the character's emotion that is portrayed by the model's animations a lot of the time. Most other named characters were either good or fine but outside of the actual cutscenes, the stilted line reading that is common in this style of game makes even VA's like Kira Buckland (Ann's VA) unable to reach the levels we know they can. The dialogue that occurred during traversal also repeated a lot, and I mean A LOT. The dialogue updates after story beats but I heard the same line of dialogue three times on average when exploring ruins or doing story based dungeons. Its not as if they're allergic to dead air because there's plenty of times without it but other times they talk like its some first party sony game giving you a hint every 10 seconds. "We could get up here, if we had a bot that could jump" Beelzebub says as I am JUMPING IN THE JUMP BOT. This happens every time. I was also surprised that I enjoyed the music. Make no mistake you get plenty of "Desert Music" but the tracks that play specifically in the dungeons and towns at night were pretty beautiful.

So how's the gameplay then? Does it carry it if the narrative is as standard as I say? Depends. Do you like driving around? Because you will be doing A LOT of that. I would say 75% of the game was me driving a bot across the maps and doing various activities. There's grotto's to explore, hills to jump up (the game calls them hills but they're more like tall rock formations), field bosses to fight, bases to raid where some are stealth based and others are combat, ruins to explore and radio towers to fix, bounties and races. Those radio towers are not something you have to climb don't worry, and their requirement to fix might as well be non existent with how little you need and how plentiful those resources are as never once did I have to take a leave and come back to fix it and yes it does populate the map with undiscovered activities in the area. The grottos are just these small single room caves that have chests or ore deposits, maybe an enemy or two inside and sometimes need rocks destroyed to access. The hills are these tall rock formations that usually have a group of enemies you should defeat before jumping to the top and getting the treasure or ore deposits. Treasure chests have either materials or parts for the bots in them with the latter being in the large variant of chests. Ruins are generally larger than the grottos and sometimes have multiple entrances. Going through them you'll run into enemies, platforming challenges, and destructible rocks while you look for chests and ore deposits where both tend to be exclusive materials which in my case was assorted coins and old variants of metals. Unless I was just being blind, which is possible, the ruins always seemed to just...end. There wasn't really a noticeable "end point" or even a boss outside of specific mission based circumstances. It made them feel pretty limp, I'll be honest. The field bosses are differently designed but larger versions of the dinosaurs, panthers and crocs who's movesets aren't much different from their grunt counterparts. The human bosses are strictly from missions and have a lot more going for them than their animal counterparts or underlings. They are not just palette swaps with basic gear on their bots like what you find in the field, they have unique or specific optional parts for their bots to make the fights a bit more interesting such as emp mines, large missile packs or a grapple that then shoves 4 drills in you for massive damage.

If you aren't doing those then your time is spent driving around in whatever bot of your choice (until you need to swap for a specific feature one has), grabbing materials so you can upgrade your bots, finding fast travel points, shooting enemies and doing side quests whose contents aren't all that engaging outside of what worldbuilding they do and what they reward. The traversal gets a lot better once you get the first "traversal oriented bot" as early on it is pretty brutal with how slow the tank is even with boost. It was a good design choice to have the boost feature of bots be infinite outside of combat but I'd be lying if I said traversal didn't wear on me when those objectives where nowhere near the fast travel points. There is also a water mechanic. NO WAIT ITS NOT WHAT YOU THINK! It is not for thirst, its actually a heal and if your water bottle is full then its a revive should you die outside of your bot. A bot reaching 0 hp is game over though, no matter how many others you have on your person. The water can be refilled at the various water tanks around the map which is one of your discoverable fast travel point options. There were not many frame drops that I ran into while playing either. I only ever saw them when destroying rocks that blocked grottos, though this game does to the "low framerate mobs when far away" thing which never really bothered me to be honest.

Speaking of side quests, I won't call it a meta game but there's this hub you get early on called Spino. This town starts out with nothing, but as you do side quests they usually end with you telling someone "Hey, this town need people. Why don't you come on down?". This gets the town to grow and become more developed, get more facilities and upgrade said facilities so you can in turn upgrade your bots and just give people with nowhere to go a nice place to live in this harsh sandy land. It reminds me of building up colony 9 in Xenoblade Chronicles. Most side quests leading to "Come to Brazil Spino!" however is part of the reason why they aren't so engaging, the other being their standard side quests gameplay of "get this thing" or "find this person" or "kill this dinosaur" which is also not very captivating. I was doing them for what I got out it not because it was more game to play. You also gain access to a customizable room that you can decorate with furnishings you either buy, craft or find and can even put your bots in them which can also be expanded in size. I am not someone who really cares about interior design so I didn't spend much time on it and can't tell you if its good or bad. If you played Yakuza 8, its similar to the room you have on Dondoko Island.

Combat is generally pretty simple but it also tests your threat assessment abilities and if you've been keeping your bots of choice up to snuff. Generally though it boils down to driving around the encounter and taking shots at the enemy bots and using secondary weapons to pick off the foot soldiers as well as shooting down their missiles. You also need to suspend your disbelief because this game does the whole "The MCs don't kill, everyone they ever fought survived being shot by a tank cannon at point blank range and/or survived their bot exploding into a ball of fire". I'll give the game this though, you see the foot soldier enemies either have the dizzy stars or run away after to take down their hp fully (animals seems to actually die though, fuck their lives I guess) but I call bullshit on the ones in the bots. This also makes the times when the game talks about death to hit a lot more than it should which took me aback each time. Story based boss fights are different story as they have their phases the go in and out of and as you would expect, require a bit more actual ability to lead your shots than an normal encounter as they can be very mobile because yes this game asks that as well as having bullet drop for things like the tank cannon. There is also out of bot combat and Beelzebub is no slouch in that regard. He has his light and heavy attacks which as you should expect and the latter can be charged. Pressing heavy after a light will change the combo ender plus he can do ariel combos and the previous combo rules apply. My favorite was the 5 hit with the heavy ender which makes Beelzebub do that Chun Li super move, Tenshokyaku. Not only that, he can dodge cancel attacks even in the air. I LOVE DODGE CANCELING! Him along with the party have abilities they can use with Beelzebub having a meter and his party having cooldowns but otherwise your party will be fighting on their own. Rao has some moves for an old man, I gotta say.

I've brought up bots a lot so I'll get into them now. There are many different bots although there is some overlap between their unique function and those that overlap seem to have one lean more towards combat and the other traversal. If I wasn't doing every side quest as they appeared they would have been gotten in a reasonable flow. The tank is well, a tank. It is slow but has a lot of health, does fantastic damage with its main cannon and will be your bread and butter more than likely though my personal favorite is the Battle Armor and its goofy style punches. Other bots are made to jump high, traverse over unsolid ground, move items or just be a fast traversal bot among other things but can be used in battle with no issues. That doesn't sound like a lot sure but coupled with the overlap, you're coming up close to 20 different bots you can build and upgrade. Yes this does mean this is a game where you're better off engaging in every encounter if you can as not all materials can be found, some must be crafted with what you have on your person (or I guess demon). I am not someone who upgrades anything and everything, only what I use, so I never had an issue with not having materials unless they physically were not obtainable yet at that point in the game. It seems to be the game's way of limiting your power, though it feels like anything that is under your level scales to you (everything in the first Sand Land map was level 18 like I was when I went back for cleanup) while things that were set above stay that way until you out level them (I ran into level 20's when I wanted to go to a previously unexplored map section when I was level 15).

Even with knowing going in that the bots were a large part of the game, I was still surprised with just how much you could do with the upgrading and customization. Each bot has a different amount of parts they can equip and each individual part can be upgraded but using the tank as an example you can change and upgrade the primary and secondary weapons, body, suspension, engine, option (bonus feature, in the tanks case something like extra armor) and then 2 chip slots for bonuses. Each one of these will change the visuals for that part of the tank, not all are unique but there's several different looks you will see. Not only will they change physically, and stats wise, which should be a given, but after a certain point in the game you can customize the paint on your bots and depending on your bot you can have a lot of things to paint as some weapons have multiple color sections you can adjust. There are also several slots for decals with rotation and size options and you can adjust the metallic and glossy finishes on each individual parts. I gave my tank the angry face with sharp teeth look, some Pteranodon emblems and made it black and white. This does cost paint to do each time so its not free, and you can unlock more colors by doing some side quests. I did not see any way to transmog parts so those of you weirdos who put aesthetics above stats will need to either deal with being underpowered, hope you find a stronger version of that part you like or upgrade that part with materials.

This was honestly a type of game that on paper I should not have enjoyed as I am pretty staunch in my stance of "traversal is generally the worst part of large map/open world games". Until the first traversal style bot is build, going around the map was a chore and I recommend not trying to do too much exploring until you get one. Combat while simple is still engaging enough due to the customizable builds of the bots and ability to make them your own with colors and decals, along with out of bot combat being fun as well. The activities could use more variety to them with more worthwhile rewards other than materials 99% of the time but at least fast travel points are plentiful once discovered. The story is by the numbers at every turn and even with enjoying the main cast, it was really Toriyama's art that did the lifting for me which is how I felt after reading the manga. I don't know why this game was giving me such a hard time to track down but I think it was worth the effort. Rest In Peace, Akira Toriyama. I'm glad more of your work is finally getting attention.

I wanted to get this done before Sparking Zero, not that I think it has any chance of releasing soon but I'm also worried about my PS3 so I'm gonna try to clear my games that need it out of the way.

Every complaint I stated in my Review of Raging Blast 1 still stands but for anyone who doesn't wanna click, the tldr is that it is very similar to the first game with just some extra mechanics and balance changes that I am not well versed in the intricacies of this duology to understand it on a deep level. Outside of being able to be hit out of supers, new recovery mechanics, and a beam finisher for pursuits while in high tension mode. Otherwise it still feels floaty, supers lack impact, dash supers still have no range, the cameraman is being paid off by the enemy so its hard to see, the right stick for super attacks is still an awful control idea and its largest new mechanic called Raging Soul are not something I enjoyed either. I in fact hate the raging soul gimmick, and it sucks that I do because it causes the intro song to play and I am always of fan of that. Whoever decided to have its activation be the guard button should have been fired. So many times did I enter high tension but the enemy shot something at me so I intended to guard that it activated. So now I gotta only rely on rush combos for damage because it locks you out of supers and ultimate attacks without a specific customization item until you run out of ki. Sure I'm getting 20 hit combos, doing twice the work that any ai above normal can vanish out of at any time with a vanish for the same damage I could get for a 5 hit launcher into an ult. The game seems to have wanted to try to be a more competitive style.

The attention to detail from the first game is still here from the transformation scenes, Janemba's cubey movement and in battle dialogue. The customization is also more front facing than ever as it is the main component of the game's main mode, Galaxy. It stops Goku and Vegeta from taking up 50% of the slots and Orange Gi without the weighted clothes underneath still goes hard with SSJ3. There is no dragon fist still however so I'm gonna dock points for that. The roster is more to what I expect from a Db game, pulling from movies and adding in some baffling absences from the first game such as Ultimate Gohan. I will also give the game props for using some damn near unused characters to this day like Neizu, Dore, Tarble, Android 14 and 15. Also I got actually Future Gohan'd by the android's fusion attack, the disrespect on those damage numbers was off the charts. I was on my last health bar and it did 99999 damage. LSSJ Broly is still yellow hair despite SSJ Broly being blue, but at least SSJ3 Broly has the green he deserves. Again its a nitpick but if you're gonna have blue hair broly, then have green otherwise make SSJ yellow too.

As I said above Galaxy Mode is the main single player feature as it gives you the credits when you beat everyone's and its unfortunately a tedious gimmick fight slobberknocker. Its similar to Smash Ultimate's World of Light now that I think about it. While each mission has difficulty ranging from easy to ultimate and the AI does get more aggressive/actually uses the defensive abilities on the higher ones, the main difficulty comes from the debuffs you will get. Health constantly draining, start near death (one hit from it), beat the enemy before raging soul runs out etc. Sometimes the game throws you a bone and YOU get the buffs like constantly recharging ki but those are few and far between. There are seal items in the game that can counter those debuffs, but they come in levels 1-3,4 or 5 and it seems arbitrary on which strength you need. Sometimes the level 1 seal works on the ultimate difficulty and sometimes level 5 won't stop it at all. But when you get one of those seals to work, then the difficulty drops dramatically. Its honestly super lazy. You can either just try to get by with what you have like I did or leave that character's galaxy and go to another's to maybe find said seal. With the exception of the fights with "perfect action" criteria, I didn't see any indicator of "this battle has an item reward" and I got so tired of the "beat the enemy before raging soul runs out" fights that I just looked it up. Some character based rewards are out of order and by some I mean Future Gohan. I went through his, got to a perfect action mission only to find out I still didn't have his SSJ transformation and after doing all of his battles. Other times a move or ability you might need isn't unlocked until after beating the "perfect action" mission that required it to fulfill, so beat the mission then do it again and thats just a dumb design decision.

I get it, we've seen the Z story 18 million times before, so how about you make your own like what handheld games like Shin Budokai Another Road did? A selling point of this game is the "Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans" OVA and it has an easy way for this "dream match" with movie characters already explained in it. Instead its just "fight with these criteria for every single character in the game". Every character didn't need one, Saibaman didn't need one, Cell Jr didn't need one. You could tell they didn't really know what to do with some of these characters because they had maybe 4 battles to their name and fighting Saibamen, Guildo and Chiaotzu with draining hp every 3 characters probably means you should have cut down.

This also might not be the game's fault as the copy is used and a little dinged up, but the game crashed on me three times on a specific mention. One time my PS3 just full on restarted, I actually thought I lost power but didn't and the other times whenever Kid Trunks was tagged in and went SSJ the game would hard freeze the console. Taking the disc out and putting it back in seemed to fix the problem as I never had the issue again on that mission or any other.

One of the other solo modes was the World Tournament, you had access to both the World tournament and Cell games, complete with ring out option for the former (I didn't look for the latter). Did both on hard and it was nice to just have a fight without any sort of buff or debuff on either side. The other solo mode was Battle Zone and I was just so fed up with the game by that point that I only did the first one. It seemed like a standard arcade ladder affair with the fights having no real gimmicks to bog it down, again only for the first one cuz there is a handicap option that I assume comes into play in the later ones.

TLDR: Having gone through both now, I realize I didn't miss out on much skipping these back in the day as harsh as that sounds. Raging Blast 2 in my eyes did not fix any issue I had with the gameplay of the first. The increased roster in terms of inclusion was much better which didn't cut down on individual attention to detail in the characters and the customization in game is still strong. Its main single player mode however is a quantity over quality, annoying gimmick filled slog. The game was at its best when it was just a strong enemy with not bonuses on either side. Half of Galaxy Mode's content could have been culled with no loss of anything of value. I will never like right stick controls for supers and I pray that Sparking Zero takes more from BT3 with actual button combinations instead.

DISCLAIMER: This is the first game I have reviewed where an update, version 1.3.1, has come out before I beat it that added substantial QoL. Usually I don't update my games but it read like no nerfs, only buffs so I said why not? As such, some topics about early game might no longer be viable but because I was more than halfway through when the patch dropped I cannot correct those topics without another playtrhrough. It is worth bringing up because it did, in fact effect my score

As usual, I will try to not do any story spoilers but gameplay is free reign. I had worries going into this game, most due to the style of combat they decided to go with. Would fight be too long? Would the darker tone come off as "what your average 13 year old wants all media to be"? Many said to me "Trust in Yoshi P" but when you also don't care for the game that got him his standing, it isn't something I'm going to do easily.

As far as plot goes, I was slipping in and out of interest as the game went on. I had played them demo on release but I redid the intro again for easier reacclimation and reminder of purpose. The early plot I was the most engaged with and given how most jrpgs are, it was totally unexpected. The entire mid plot however, I had zero interest whatsoever and was just going through it to get through but thankfully once that was resolved the plot also became interesting again. The general pacing didn't help, and its one of those "Oh right, the mmo team made this" aspects. There are sidequests that are only not classified as such due to them having the red marker instead of green. Come come off this large climactic moment and you next course of action is running back an forth between 3 people to have them talk to you and then maybe go do a fetch quest or fight a group of fodder enemies, after of course seeing a cutscene shown via a map with pieces on it to illustrate "what has now happened". I guess they blew the budget on other things because this reeks of trying to cut down on something. We saw plenty of scenes where the main cast should have no way of knowing so why go about it this way? If I was just told "oh yeah this happened" in a blurb it would have had the same outcome. And yes, majority of the sidequests are awful but I did them all anyway and thank god that update added the quick warp back to the questgiver. I was real tired of Clive's "its chilly outside but I'm too lazy to bundle up but I gotta get the mail" jaunt of a walk in the hubs. Why didn't they allow him to dash? This is in EVERY hub, town whatever. I swear if the teleport wasn't added it would have put another 45 minutes to the total game time. I will say though, the darker nature of this game had me shocked at some actions they took. I certainly never would have expected violence of that type in a Final Fantasy game before. Also lots of Fucks were said, sometimes comically so.

The characters were, fine I guess. Honestly I didn't really have a favorite aside from Torgal. Clive seems to be very well liked and I can see why, Ben Starr did a pretty damn great performance. Cid had a very nice voice too. But Torgal, I think he's up there in terms of video game dog hierarchy. My boy was doing some sick ass combos and follow ups on enemies both in and out of cutscene. Everyone else I couldn't care less about and thats probably another large reason why I was having a hard time keeping interest in the plot. I'm probably not gonna remember most of the character's names outside of the main like 5, and one unfortunate girl who's nickname is an accurate description of interacting with her.

The music was very good. The ost had a lot of slower, soft and somber tracks which if anyone knows me are my favorite types. There was even a rendition of the main theme that is probably my number 2. I'm just a sucker for that theme, its like a cheat code to get a smile out of me in an FF game. The prelude was also invited to the game and its renditions were nice as well. The most surprising thing was even the battle music had its slower moments. I'm trading blows with a boss and suddenly the strings come in and its like something I'd hear during some high class party, not a life or death battle.

I'll be a lot more detailed going forward, because we're entering the gameplay now.

Lets start with the game's gear and general itemization. Why is it even here? This gear system is 6 items: Your weapon, belt, arm and three accessories. There is only 1 weapon type Clive has access to and that is his sword and all that matters with them is the attack and stun numbers, this goes for your belt and arm gear as well but it replace attack and stagger for defense and bonus health. Majority of the time both will increase so it doesn't matter. There was maybe two times were I had to choose between keeping my current sword on or using one that only had more attack or stagger. There is also no innate elemental affinity to the weapons themselves. Flametounge, Icebrand, Gaia Sword etc just do typeless damage. The accessories is where you're gonna get any sort of meaningful changes from however its still not much. You have your usual stat increase ones for attack, defense and HP (the rest of the stats despite being in the level up menu seem straight up pointless), your "easy mode" ones that automate certain aspects and then ones that decrease the cooldown of your eikon abilities or their damage. I played on action difficulty the whole time (basically normal) and I never saw a reason to swap from the increased exp, increased ap and auto charge magic ones once they were unlocked. I did try the eikon related ones but the changes seemed negligible on action, on final fantasy difficulty (that you need to beat the game to access) I'm sure they're more necessary. The game also has a crafting system which also begs why its even in the game. There are weapons and gear that can only be crafted and you can also reinforce you gear to make it stronger. Sounds fine so why does am I questioning it existing? Because most materials are in abundance! Unless it was a sidequest, mark or boss reward I never was lacking and could make gear the moment it appeared. Even the limited materials were only needed for the specific items so their rarity was more just to block you out of getting stronger stuff early than anything. Your consumables are also limited in terms of how many you can hold of each, you can also only access 3 types at a time that you set and they're all standard. Potion, Hi Potion, attack/defense buff potions, elixer, one time revive elixer etc. Hey though, this is probably the first final fantasy game I can say I used the standard potion during the final boss!

Exploration was barely a thing. Sure there were some more open maps but most of the time it was empty with just the scenery and a couple enemies. The chests you run into would mostly have either gil or materials, with the more important ones being in the story based mapless dungeons. Clive has access to that dash I complained about earlier but outside of the more hallway oriented parts it isn't enough. Even when you get the Chocobo, I think she's too slow. She's faster than Clive for sure but I don't know, she just didn't feel like she helped me get to where I wanted to go all that much quicker. I fast traveled any chance I could have.

Combat is the big thing in this game. "Devil May Fantasy/ Final Fantasy May Cry", its as deep ad you want to make it but even then I didn't find it any deeper than waist high. You have a handful of tools at your disposal: Perfect dodging, parrying, ability and dodge canceling, timed magic burst, eikon switching, ariel rave air combos, however you only have one singular 4 hit combo as you main and I think is the largest issue. There should have been more routes, maybe delayed style to vary it up a bit because no, the eikon abilities do no do enough since they are limited as well. You can set up to 3 eikons in your loadout, and each has 2 slots you can put a skill in along with each one having a unique mechanic like a dash, charge or block on the other button since X is relegated to jump. This limits them greatly, each eikon has 4 moves not counting the unique one and the skills can only be changed outside of battle. Upgrading costs AP with some of them being expensive to master with the point of mastering being that skills can be used on other eikon sets. Once I got my full moveset situated, I build my loadout and didn't bother with tinkering for the remaining 1/3 of the game. Titan's was probably my favorite because I am a simple man and anything that allows me to punch is my go to. Before I unlocked it I was honestly not into the combat, just going through the motions hoping it would eventually become fun. Flurry of Punches was just so satisfying and the fact it could be used to counter not just melee but also magic made it even sweeter. The eikon abilities are the closest thing you will have to a different weapon type in the game. Magic is just aesthetic, as it changes with each eikon equipped but otherwise did no difference in damage and enemies didn't seem to have any weaknesses.

Credit where its due, the normal fights never dragged on which was one of my largest fears going in. I say normal fights because the stagger rears its ugly head here and if any of you read my FF7 Remake review then you know how I feel about their last attempt at it. I can say here while the general feeling of "it feels more like a nerf and then allowed to do full damage", aside for a SINGLE fight it never once reset after a cutscene. The bosses did drag at times, but I expect a boss to have more health so I'm not too annoyed about it. Some of those fights were pretty damn great anyway. The sidequests are the weakness of the devs but the cinematic aspect of the bossfights are their strengths. One fight its a tense one on one sword, perfect dodge and parry fest and the other is an Asura's Wrath level event. I do think the Eikon fights could have used more depth, the trickle of moves made the first few some of the slowest fights in the game but in terms of pulling them out to fight they showed a surprising amount of restraint. The setpieces of these eikon fights were lovely to see for the first time and the sense of scale was preserved no matter what they did. I do think that these would be the worst part of replay though, due to just how cinematic they can be. I hope you like quicktimes, especially the mashing kind. Also I don't know where to put this but an enemy had an attack called "Spirits Within" and I find that funny.

Saying that this game was a twice as long but half as fun Devil May Cry is false, there is much more to the game than that and same goes for the "Final Fantasy of Thrones" or "Game of Final Fantasy" or whatever that joke name was. However in trying to make sure the usual rpg fan can get in, the combat is shallower than what a character action stlye enjoyer would want so as a fan of both it left me doubly displeased. The story had more ups and down than a merry go round horse in terms of its pacing, it could have used some fat trimming. Turning such a longstanding plot tradition on its head could just be for the sake of it or those who try to find meaning in every sentence could see it as a direct statement on some reliance of the past and needing to break it. Despite that I will still never agree with Final Fantasy ditching turn based/atb and going full on combo MAD, but I wouldn't be opposed to coming back to FF17 if they allow the combat to pull from more of the movesets. I don't know if the darker tone is going to be the standard going forward, but maybe don't realy on people yelling FUCK so much, eh? FF16 tried dto do something new, its trying to get its feet planted on the ground again, which some would argue its been doing since FFX, but the groundwork is here. Whenever I get around to Rebirth, its combat is gonna have a hard time comparing and this is exactly why I went through FF7R before this. I wonder if those Torgal plushies are still on sale?

Aint feeling this one and this isnt so much a review as it is a complaint list.

No ability to save so the whole game needs to be beaten in a single run and everything you got from levels to items is reset as well.
You can't even fucking jump or grab and the dodge can't be used to cancel animations.
Cooldowns in a beat em up, you're better off spamming items than your actual abilities and single combo string.
Very much not balanced for single player with how much abuse normal enemies take, especially on the last stage, and those ai followers you find are too stupid to be useful. If multiplayer was the intended use then the release should have been delayed to when the online was functional.
Good lucking luck getting any charge reliant ability out if an enemy is within 50 feet of you, you will be hit out of it cuz you can't move while charging it.
Death is loss of all coins, followers and being sent back to the "checkpoint", so the boss is midway through the 5th part of the stage you go back to stage 3. However since you're starting from the midway you miss out on getting coins and followers from the first 2 parts of the stage
Enhance is too expensive to just be a "chance" of it to work.
Too much RNG with the gear.

I have now beaten a run and my earlier complaints remain except I said upgrade when I meant enhance initially. The beat em up parts still need a lot of work

I write this with a heavy heart.

I never played battlefront 1, so having that as part of the collection was nothing but a plus for me but if it had anything wrong with it compared to the original I wouldn't know. 1 is very basic. Its story mode is very barebones, its just a bot match with a slide, a character telling you your mission and maybe movie footage before it. Before I installed the update the movie cutscenes that were really low quality, maybe 360p at best. The update fixed it but the videos were choppy a lot of the time. That same update REMOVED the option to invert the Y axis and also corrupted my saves in both titles. In BF1 I was about 3 story mission in and 2 I just booted to check the menu since I wanted to play while it downloaded. Aspyr you are something else.

Battlefront 2 is one of my favorite and most played ps2 games and I'm happy that I seemed to reacclimate well. Also it has the real menu unlike that awful, lazy concept art that the originl pc version has which I checked last week. The movie cutscenes are also still here unlike in the pc version which again, I check last week, and wern't as choppy as in 1. So as for as I'm concerned this is a better version in that regard natively. Battlefront 2 also seemed like it had more work put into it when it came to the texture upscaling cuz it blew 1 out of the water but it has that issue where using a scope to zoom is still 4:3. Its not all sunshine and rainbows though. Just like Battlefront 1 there is no ability to invert aim despite it being in the older versions which I put in my ps2 to check. Some of the cutscenes cut off early despite me not pressing a button and the last cutscene on hoth didn't even have sound. Also the post mission 501st journals did not exist so I missed out on one of my favorite ones for post Felucia. Some of the heroes voice lines when you are able to play as them are cut off, usually the sith's "what is your bidding" is cut off. Right before I sat down to finish writing this I had the sound die on the main menu as well. I tested it after and its reproducible after leaving instant action. Aspyr might be some of the most inept devs I've ever seen. No wonder you were kicked off the kotor remake and couldnt get the restored content dlc for the switch port of kotor 2 dsepite it being part of your marketing campaign if you can't do something as simple as keep fucking cutscenes in games. They're also too stupid to compress cuz the game was 25gb, and there was zero reason they should have been. Not as bad as on pc where there game is 50.

One of the reasons I was interested in this collection was because it has the content from the xbox release I never had cuz I was a ps2 boy. Kit Fisto and Assaj Ventress were in Renegade Squadron so I got to play them there but never in BF2 proper. Kit was cool with his force ball but I found his moveset to be unwieldy and Ventress had this dual saber connected with a chain with throwing stars. I remember seeing claims that these versions of the characters were a stolen mod and I'd believe it. They don't even have voice lines. The maps were just maps from battlefront 1, I thought they were gonna be wholly new. Assault on all maps ended up being what I thought, force pushing people into pits. Assault on every map is still cool don't get me wrong but I was always sure there was a reason it was only on Mos Eisley.

I had no intention of playing the multiplayer initially as I couldn't give less of a shit about it but with all the complaints about it so I went to see for myself. I booted it up at 9 am on a Thursday and saw several full 64 player matches and many others with 50+. I counted 30 dedicated aspyr server choices among the player created matches. Tried 2 of the 64 player, my internet is comcast bad so it was pretty laggy even wired but hits were registering as I was getting kills and respawning worked. A 30 player lobby had less lag but still there. Whenever someone says something is unplayable, we should all know by now that they don't know what the word means.

This should have been a slam dunk, and EASY slam dunk. Battlefront 2 is still VERY fun to me and the new stuff, new to me damnit, freshened up a game I had over 100 hours in back in the day. However its just all around sloppy in presentation and every mistake the game makes reeks of not caring. Make no mistake, I'll be booting this one up for some splitscreen fun every now and again, but with how stacked the beginning of this year has been and how it WILL be later on, there are better things I can spend my time on like getting a dlc character ready for shadow of the erdtree. I would hope these issues get fixed but as far as I'm concerned its too little to late. You're a joke and a liar aspyr, you deserve the star wars license as much as EA does. Which is not at all.

Damn I despise aspyr. How do you fuck it up so bad?

Before anything, I am mad and I refuse to suffer alone. I saw someone say the Star arcana looks like Todd Howard. Enjoy!

As much as I would like to say "I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS!" the more I heard more about the game before I got around to it as late as I have, the more worried I got. Thanks Sega for releasing 2 jrpgs I wanted to play so close to each other with Yakuza coming out first. Only getting one day off a week isn't gonna stop me from JRPGing! I will wake up MANY hours early to make progress before heading in for the day. Persona 3 FES is my favorite jrpg, one of my top games of all time and should we evoke a "one per franchise" rule so mgs1,2,3,4,and revengence aren't hogging the top 5, it would be my number 2. Some things that follow might come off harsh, nitpicky or complaining for complaining's sake. Its also easier to complain than compliment, especially when a lot of what I like about this game is story related. The only game that would be under even harsher scrutiny would be a remake of MGS1. Regardless of any complaints that follow, thank god people who are unable to handle ai party members and don't want to emulate and mod no longer need to settle for a worse presenting version of Persona 3 called Persona 3 Portable now that this exists.

So lets start with the story, and despite this game approaching 20 years old I'm gonna be as spoiler free as possible. Gameplay I'll spoil mechanics but story is the most important part of jprgs so I'm gonna let that remain obfuscated. In a post FF7R world, every "remake" now has the potential to be a different game while wearing the skin of the old to get people to buy it so just seeing something getting a remake isn't a cause for celebration for me anymore. The plot is by and large the same, including the early months often sited as being "too plow paced" and I couldn't be happier about that. Persona 3's story and themes were something that changed me as a person, and I still hold strong to a lot of those beliefs to this day. Make no mistake, there were changes. Some new scenes and dialogues were added, some of which were there to explain changes to things such as the outfits or the new Theurgy system. The other new story scenes and dialogues don't really take away anything and attempted to do a little bit of fleshing out for some of the more underbaked characters to lackluster results unless it was a link episode. The main villain had a line in one of these that could have been taken from a redditor or your average twitter user. You can also see the post arena aspect of Akihiko and Mitsuru effect them as well. As far as social links go the changes to their contents are minute at best, so the good ones are still good (SUN) and the bad ones are still bad (MOON). You also don't get automatically put into a romance with female characters which to me was a mandatory change. Certain options will raise the romance flag but if you did it accidentally or didn't realize some lead that way, in my experience, you can walk it back before committing towards the end of the link. You can also rewind up to the last 5 "passage of time" events should you think you messed up somewhere. You should still be rotating your saves though, don't be an idiot in that regard. Social links are also fully voiced now, but interactions outside of those such as some weekend hangouts aren't. The male party members didn't have social links in the original and in portable they replaced other social link characters but here they have link episodes I mentioned prior which are more streamlined social link replacements. You don't need to worry about choosing the right options, they are linear and while giving you the expected reward for maxing out a social link (a unique fusion) you get other goodies too, but even without those I think seeing the characters get more added to them is worth it alone. I always appreciate more Koromaru. I've seen this ending several times in my life now, be it by playing or watching other people and it never fails to hit me. That piano has the same effect on me as Secret Base from Anohana. I think I cried harder now that back when I beat the game the first time.

Graphically and animation wise, the game is beautiful. Atlus has really stepped up their 3d game, I didn't play Royal so maybe this has been the standard for awhile, and just more proof at how much of an inarguable downgrade portable was in terms of presentation to the original. All these pivotal moments aren't reduced to shaking jpgs and sound effects. There was also a good amount of anime cutscenes still in the game, which makes me wonder why ones such as the first persona awakening and Aigis' introduction were in 3d among others. Those 3d recreations had for lack of a better word lost some "soul". However I do think the new art direction is at odds with Persona 3's themes and general mood quite often. Outside of blues, the original game as more muted and here is more saturated and bright. Also it has the persona 5 strikers thing where everyone looks like they've been dipped in olive oil. They look damp and shiny at all times. But the "hit the weakness" and critical persona attack busting through the character face cut in didn't get old, and I honestly used it to figure out weaknesses before they even hit. The new Theurgy mechanic's animations were so fluid and fun to watch which is good cuz you can't skip them, just like all out attacks. I'll go into more detail about them in the gameplay section. Having the camera be closer to the MC (who I will refer to as Makoto going forward) as opposed to the birds eye view allows a lot more detail to be seen, especially in tartarus where they went mental in visual design. It doesn't fix the inherent issues with tartarus as a whole but at least its more visually stimulating. Every character has their own all out attack end screen and you bet I was using the screenshot feature for all of them. The battle end animation was also dynamic, with the characters walking away in different orders. I don't know exactly what effects the order other than whoever landed the killing blow has the center focus. That pause menu though, my god that pause menu! It was so smooth I damn near slipped out of my chair when I first saw it in person. The fall into the water transition, the character's faces in the shard in Makoto's hand while looks through the party, the persona flavor text, oozing style. Does that match Persona 3 tone wise? No not at all but I'd be a liar if I said it isn't appealing. That's some more of your unignorable P5 influence in action. The new outfits are also really slick. I like them all but I think Yukari, Mitsuru and Fuuka got the best ones. However should you want to go back to the classic outfit with classic armband, you can since its a costume and wont effect stats. I'm glad that is the case but I didn't take advantage of that cuz again, I REALLY like the new outfits. Also the battle panties and "Sexy armor" (thats what its called) are still in the game and that shocked me as I didn't think those would come back. Maybe I'm just too used to games not having shit like that anymore.

In terms of voice acting, I do think its all good to great. However I still don't see why most of the VAs needed to be replaced (we know why Junpei's old one was gonna be replaced no matter what), especially since some are still in the game as different characters or in Elizabeth's case is still her OG, Tara Platt who was Mitsuru's OG va as well. Like if they can still do the voice and were clearly available since you still have them in the game as smaller roles, it feels to me as you didn't wanna pay their "now a more known name" rates. The treatment of voice actors is a discussion for another time and place, not in a review of a video game like some game journalist would force in. At least I got to hear Liam O'Brien again in some form. Junpei and Mitsuru's VAs, Zeno Robinson and Allegra Clark respectively, sound like they're going for imitation and they do a bang up job. If I didn't know beforehand I probably would have taken a good while to notice the change. Fuuka is a straight up improvement to me, and I find it funny that she shares her VA with FF7R Yuffie, Suzie Yeung. Game crushes from my youth both have the same VA in remakes is quite the coincidence. The main one I took issue with was Akihiko's new VA, Alejandro Saab. He's not bad, I actually think he did a great job but Liam O'Brien is one of my favorite VAs so no one was gonna fill that void and he did not grow on me despite being a main part of my battle party. Koromaru is also actually voiced by a human now doing dog sounds and I never got used to it. Yes it was stock wolf noises in the original but you can't beat a wolf howl. It was just off and he's always in my party since he's the single best character in the series. Everyone else of SEES (Yukari, Aigis, Shinji, Ken) were fine, minor things like I miss the bite Michelle Ruff gave Yukari's delivery and the initial more stilted speech Aigis had that went away as she spend more time with the crew are gone but they weren't dealbreakers.

Now for gameplay. As I said above, you have full control over party members. REJOICE all of you who didn't see the big fuckin TACTICS option and fell victim to the "Mitsuru used Marin Karin" memes. Unlike in portable, the game feels balanced for it. Some character's kits have been reworked such as Akihiko not having as many debuffs but that aint gonna stop me from using him just like how Ken being really good now won't make him a permanent member. You have the "Shift" mechanic with is not quite baton pass but allows you to free swap after knocking an enemy down so you can continue to do so. You're gonna want to do that cuz shuffle time has been reworked with new rewards and buffs along with the original money, sword, healing and exp choices that you're gonna want it after every battle. Grab those major arcana cards for buffs such as more exp, persona stat increases and being able to choose multiple cards during shuffle time and when you grab enough you get an ARCANA BURST which increases the level of all reward cards. The Theurgy mechanic is also brand new and is basically super attacks that ignore resistances or buff/heal your party. Every character's meter fills up by just fighting but doing specific things will make it fill up faster but not all requirements are made equal. For example, Aigis hitting with her physical skills gives her more meter than just regular attacking while Yukari get more for healing, which is what she is doing most of the time. Characters also get specific traits as you bond with them in non social link related hangouts at the dorm such as Yukari having healing spells only use 1/2 their required sp. Another change that I expected to be mandatory was the ability to manually choose persona skills for inheritance, not just for yours but your party members as well. Not only that, but the skill card copying is much better too. You go up to the inari, pray, choose the card you want and you get the copy immediately and best of all IT TAKES NO TIME. There is literally no reason to not copy cards every day that you can and it makes the sword cards of shuffle time no longer being weapons but instead skill cards an easier pill to swallow.

If you didn't like Tartarus in the older games then I don't know if they did enough here to make you like it, unless you're a style first person then you might be shallow enough to be pleased. The floors are a lot more visually stimulating as I said earlier but you're still running through randomly generated floors despite the new mechanics. The sizes of the floors vary greatly. Sometimes its not much more than an L shape even at the higher floors and other times its like 3 large treasure areas with 16 hallways connecting them all. Until you leave tartatrus though, floors are persistent once explored. Going back to a floor will leave any chests as they were when you moved on but enemies will still respawn. Characters would also not shut the fuck up in tartarus. When you see an enemy, a chest, a teleporter, the stairs, after battle, just walking around, dead air is not allowed until you have cleared that floor out. I heard the same lines over and over and even changing character doesn't really change much outside of the non generics. Outside of gold hands, treasure chests, strong enemies and floor centric gimmicks like "enemies have aliments" or "its fucking dark" you now have breakables for items to sell or consumables, locked chests, monad doors and greed shadows. Those locked chests replace the gold chests of the original and require Twilight Fragments to open. Twilight Fragments are one of the most important things you will have in this remake. As I said you need them for locked chests which is where you'll find weapons and gear but now you need to use them to heal at the clock. Yes the clock costs something now and early on you will be struggling to have any amount of those shards. There are a handful of them as one time pickups in the overworld but you mainly get them as rewards for leveling social links as well as rewards from Elizabeth's requests but rarely you can find them as breakables on floors. There is also no bench EXP in this game so you have two options when it comes to catching up characters. 1, the old fashioned way of grinding reapers or two, the great clock. I try to fight the reaper before beating the game each time and outside of the flu exploit in vanilla p5, this one wasn't too difficult even with unoptimized personas thanks to Theurgy. Outside of battle it made me damn near shit myself though. The great clock appears on floors after using a certain amount of twilight shards. How many? No idea but it was definitely more than 10. That allows you two pick 2 party members and the next battle you fight with them, will catch them up to within a level of Makoto. I would have very much rather a bench exp system that at worst started out at like 25% and increased with the fool social link or something. The Monad Doors come in two types, those on random floors and those on boss floors. The ones on random floors are a single hallway with a boss in the middle, and you get two chests as a reward which in my experience was something random and then materials for weapon crafting. The boss doors are several hallways with several bosses and chests that tend to end with you getting a new arcana card for shuffle time so you can access more effects. They're good for exp but I was definitely bored of them after the first couple times. I still did them all, no reason not to. Greed shadows will basically do all your collecting work for you as they open all the chests but in order to catch them you are forced to make choices as you chase. I never missed one but also once Fuuka learns tartarus search it removes that aspect and you can just fight them after a dialogue box.

Music is where most of my complaints lie since I do love me the Persona 3 OST. The new music like "Its Going Down Now" and "Color Your Night" are fantastic, especially the latter. Go listen to it RIGHT THE FUCK NOW! Full Moon Full Life is the new into and its good, but I prefer Burn My Dread. I appreciated the respect to Burn My Dread and Want to be Close in the beginning but I don't appreciate the teasing. Majority of the remixes I don't really care for though, they're at best inoffensive. I can actually understand the dorm music now outside of "HEY HEY HEY" and that was a trip. I think the only one I liked more outright was Changing Seasons and it really felt like they added a lot more lyrics as opposed to the barely audible french in the original that happened like twice. Two of my favorite songs in Persona 3 are "Mass Destruction" and "Want to be Close" to the point where the former is my favorite battle theme in the genre. I could not dislike those remixes any more than I do. I'm gonna start with "Want to be Close" first cuz I have less I can articulate well about it. As begins it sounds great, then when the lyrics start it just feels flat to me. I was able to put up with it and the game replaces it partway through anyway with Changing Seasons. As for Mass Destruction, I was no longer upset that there was a different song that played when I got advantage after listening to it, which is the aforementioned "Its Going Down Now". Just like "Want to be Close" it starts out great, some strong "BABY BABY BABY" as it begins and lotus juice sounds great but after that first "OH YEAH" it sounds like the new singer gave up. The battle theme is no longer the bop it used to be and instead like it had the life sucked out of it. Yes I am aware that "its supposed to be the enemy advantage theme so its purposefully not as exciting" but fuck that, the song isn't worth being the most played song in the game now. At least "Its Going Down Now" gave me my baby baby fix and again is a great song. The new Mass Destruction never grew on me and I gave it until late September in game, then during any non story sequence tartarus runs I was playing the original at full blast. Now I gotta deal with the chance that should Mass Destruction come to other games in the future is has a very high likelihood to be this version. If Atlus releases a classic music pack that AT LEAST includes the original Mass Destruction though it also having the original Want to Be Close is ideal, I'll bump this game up to 5 stars despite my other issues.

Another thing I was not a fan of was certain removals of social link choices. When it comes to clubs, you had an assortment of options before. When going for athletics you could choose between Kendo, Swimming and Track. For culture you could choose between art, photo and music. Here your only options are art and track. Yes I know other than the focal point of the club the actual links were barely different, but Kendo is cooler than Track. I've seen some speculation that its a causality of having all the s links being fully voiced. Thats a shame if true, y'all should learn to read. I also know the game is based off of vanilla P3 which explains other removals (some they allowed to squeeze in like Aigis' social link) but man, if it isn't lame that the Makoto is once again locked to a singular weapon type. I WANNA USE BIG SWORDS! I don't wanna use Junpei to get my big sword fix. There was also a change to a specific boss fight, it removed the player element to it. Anyone who remembers "the roulette" knows what I'm talking about. That was pretty lame. I was expecting a change in the way to "get your desired result" but making it making it full on luck, while can be seen as thematically appropriate, they still went and made it sometimes scripted. Its last spin might have more thematic meaning now that I think about it, given the cutscene that follows.

I write these reviews as I play the game and had my thoughts on the lack of answer and FEMC not being in the game initially in the above section, but two days ago The Answer dlc was announced, cheeky bastards choosing that day, to release in September in an expansion pass alongside P4EX and P5EX music and velvet room attendant costumes. I sure as hell won't be paying extra for these. How about you give me the good versions of Mass Destruction and Want to Be Close back instead? I never liked The Answer both story and gameplay wise and I can't imagine they'd change much with it given how they handled the base game though it would probably be a HELL of a lot easier with access to Theurgy. No details on FEMC, not that I ever thought she'd happen, but I can't say say I would buy the her dlc either especially with the potential of "Time" and "Way of Life" to get treated as poorly as "Want to be Close" and "Mass Destruction".

TLDR if you skipped this far (bars). Reload is the same great story with the themes and characters that made those of us love it way back when with some minor changes to them such as some extra scenes. It has beautiful models and cutscenes, slick aesthetic that in my opinion clashes with the tone and themes of the game, great voice acting, some great new tracks at the cost of butchering remixes of the more played tracks in the game (which were my favorites), but ideally more in line with what I think a remake should be and want from one. It updated gameplay to the current standards of the series without forcing a genre change but left the story 98% intact. A lot of this came off as nitpicky, but when I love a source as much as this its just whats gonna happen. At the end of the day I enjoyed my time playing the game, and thats what I want to happen when I play games first and foremost especially when its a remake of a personal favorite. If you REALLY cannot handle ai party members or don't want to emulate to use the mod for FES, which for the latter I respect and a supporter of original hardware, then this one is a more than fine version to play. You get the most important parts of what made Persona 3 so loved: its story, characters and themes without being an inferior VN and cursor experience like portable. Reload aint the definitive version as it lacks aspects like MC weapon usage, club choice variations and FEMC, though its closer with the recently announced answer dlc. Regardless, its better than having portable as the only official release of Persona 3 on current platforms. Whens the classic music pack though Atlus?

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to take a break from the genre for a while. I continue to suffer from the fact most of the games I want to play are jrpgs.

I still refuse to call these games Like a Dragon in english, Yakuza 8 forever

I got into the Yakuza games with 4 and as such I prefer to play these games with Japanese voices since its not only what I am used to but I was already like 7 games in before they dubbed them again with 7. So yes I played 7 in Japanese as did I for Gaiden. This time however was the first time I had the dilemma cuz Danny Trejo is in this game and he is one of my favorite actors. So whats the dilemma? Since I was unsure going in if they were gonna stick to their guns on this being Kiryu's final game or not, and I'm keeping it vague on purpose, do I stick with Japanese for potentially Takuya Kuroda's last time or I get Danny Trejo and not only miss out on Takuya Kuroda but put up with YongYea Kiryu? I chose to stick to Japanese. I will watch all the Danny Trejo scenes once I post this review. That being said, there was quite a lot of english being spoken in the game outright and usually by the enemies walking around Hawaii.

Gonna start with gameplay and my largest complaint about 7 which was its implementation of turn based combat. Characters would get stuck on things running towards enemies, I'd get basic attacks interrupted despite being LONG past the enemy, and most importantly I hated that the characters paced back and forth in place during battle. When I saw that there was a circle area around a controlled character in 8 I had hoped the characters had gotten their ADHD under control. Unfortunately for me its not entirely fixed. The character you are controlling at that time does in fact not move, however those you do not are still walking around. WHY CANT CHARACTERS SIT STILL?! The amount of times my allies walked out of my buffs/healing and into enemy AOEs was way too high. They don't need to be moving around on their own! You can do the positioning based attacks and team ups without it. PLENTY BEFORE YOU HAVE! Oh and I've caught them walking out of my team up attack range right when I'm about the press the button too. Because of this alone I still do not like their implementation of turn based combat. Unless I put some sort of automatic equipment on a character or activate some auto skill, a character in my party in a turn based rpg SHOULD. NOT. DO. A. GODDAMN. THING. unless I hit the button. This is my hill and I will die on it! I also will never like MC death causing a game over. I will never understand it either. Everyone just becomes braindead as soon as Kasuga dies I guess. Why are Sega published games the only ones I seem to run into who use this dumb mechanic since it still also exists in persona? The game was also still pretty stingy with money payouts, even though they did increase as the game progressed. I highly advise anyone who is for some reason reading this before they are finished/in the middle of their run to get a housekeeper asap to get the money sucker ability and use it on the crown enemies. You'll thank me for that later. Also one party member was gotten WAY too late. There was not enough time to get them set up substantially so they were underpowered for the end of it. I still used them but I really didn't wanna run the dungeons to get them up to par job skill wise (they were also a good 10 levels under me).

As for things they did that I liked, they let you know if an enemy will resist your attack unlike from what I remember in the first one as awell as auto win when you're high enough level. Back attacks, teammates following up knocked down enemies, hitting enemies you smack towards them (which are skills that unlock as your bond increases) as well as knocking enemies into each other/walls/objects like exploding barrels allows the more tankier enemies to not be as much of a slog and fodder to be dealt with quickly with potentially 3 attacks in a single turn for the cost of one skill max. Jobs are VERY unique and it seems like changing jobs isn't as much of a detriment. Stats seem to be handled much differently, like when I gave everyone new jobs when it unlocked I was still beating enemies at my level with ease. I was also getting job exp increasing gear in loads, I had like 6 of the pyrodancer and martial artist gear for instance. Being able to bring over ANY learned skill with the inheritance slots allows a lot more coverage to be had which I do not remember if it was a problem in 7. Going off my hatred of "MC death equals game over despite having multiple characters who can revive you" at least here despite there being no diffiuclty option, unless it was a 1v1, I was rarely in a position where I was in danger of game overing. Plus, you can just pay money to revive at the beginning of the fight as you were or fully healed (incase you got jumped I guess?). The game also let you know what level you should be and what strength gear you should have for certain parts, which is welcome. The parts were pretty obvious when it would appear anyway so its not like it spoiled "Big fight coming! You best be ready!".

I did both the sujimon and dodokon island side content to their completions as soon as I unlocked them respectively, and I didn't really like either of them. Suijimon at least got me a beastmaster job but the actual sujimon battles felt like a mobile game so I never touched them again when all was said and done. Even though I did like the job, it has its issues. Its a barehanded weapon and its abilities use your set sujimon. Even with high rarity, max level and friendship sujimon I found the damage to fall off pretty hard and Kasuga has better jobs to use so it being exclusive to him is a massive detriment imo. Plus you can't transfer any of its skill to other jobs, including essences so it really just felt like one to level for shits and giggles.

As for Dodokon island, I disliked it even more. I'm just not a fan of everything about it. The fact you cant sleep to progress the days until its night, the monotonous resource gathering, the buildings you can use being at least 50% of assets from kamurocho/ijincho that clash hard while you fiddle around with a grid that gives me Dark Cloud vibes (that for whatever reason ran real bad while moving horizontally) and the real time waits (up to an hour) for the farm to get shit done. Oh btw, the real time farming doesnt progress if you go to the mainland. When I was finished with the whole thing I had over 6million dodokon dollars but converting it upon leaving left me with about 600,000. 6 million was again EVERYTHING I had left over after getting to 5 stars in a couple sittings without leaving. A full trip to get my full payout would be 3 days which is about 40 minutes but the payouts would vary due to who was invited. I was getting more on average by vacuuming the rich enemies (who spawn pretty regularly) in a mid game area in less time without money up gear as well. There is a reward when you beat it but it just seemed too costly for the damage it was doing. Since everything is maxxed I just either run around and do the same randomly generated tasks, gather resources from the island and farm to makes buildings to sell or sit there with my thumb up my ass until I can sleep. This is NOWHERE near as lucrative compared to the confectionary side job in 7 where I was leaving with a couple million after like 15 minutes max. Running the randomly generated dungeons and as I said above using the housemaid vacuum attack on the crown enemies and bosses was more lucrative as it takes me half the time and I get comparable payouts ON TOP of being able to level jobs and characters, so it just felt like I wasted my time with dondoko island. The other mini games like Crazy Delivery and Sicko Snap all well and good, I like Crazy Delivery way more than can collecting. Be sure to throw on "All I want" by The Offspring while playing Crazy Delivery from the optimal experience. The arcade also has Sega Bass Fishing in it, the peakest of arcade peak. By the way, did you know Gachapin and Mukku are in irl mascots? They've apparently appeared in Granblue and advertised a Kamen Rider show. That mixed me real hard when I found that out.

The story was once again the best part of the game to me and I will not be going into direct spoilers but a bit after midway through, I was getting even more into it. The game did come to a halt around there pacing wise but I didn't care, cuz I wanted the content it introduced. I don't know if its just cuz of how much time I've now spent with the series and what the side content there represents or having recently gone through a similar situation as one of the main characters with my late Nana, but it made me depressed yet at the same time happy and nostalgic. Also they remembered Dead Souls. I broke down twice during this game. Gaiden almost got me to at its end, but the dam fully broke here. I almost feel bad for anyone who jumped in on this game as their first due to this. I say almost cuz that was your stupid decision to not play what came before. I did not buy the big boy edition so I do not have access to The Big Swell, and do not know what it entails. I don't do NG+ much in games and never once in this series so I'm not shelling out for it. I'll probably just watch it. The ending of the game had me feeling some kind of way and I can't put into words what exactly it is.

TDLR: While some of my issues with the combat were remedied, my largest issue of characters not sitting still was not so I still do not like this turn based combat and a party member was received too late into the game. The story was good despite the pacing issue around the middle but on the whole, well done. The two larger minigames the game introduced were not my thing and there were much better ways to get funds for these dragon quest ass gear prices. The new jobs were unique and the changes to the job system made switching jobs more advantageous than detrimental. I found the repeatable dungeons that they expect you to run if you want to get the best weapons, tedious and dull due to their randomly generated nature. Despite it coming off as I had more gripes than likes, the game is still largely fantastic. I'll have to check my rankings again but I'll definitely be putting it up there. Please play as many as the other games as you can before play this, don't be a slave to fomo and don't be an impatient baby. Put in the work and it'll be worth it.

I understand a lot more now why people say they want Sparking Zero to play like Tenkaichi instead of Raging Blast. Granted I agreed regardless but now I actually have context.

Its no Budokai Tenkaihichi 3, which playing this made me boot it up again and that game is still the most solid in existence, but its still pretty good though with how much I played BT3 I could see just how much of the game was lifted from it. Theres a good amount of content here, just the story mode alone too me two days. The What-Ifs are where its at and why you should play this game.
I play on actual hardware if able and this game looked fantastic running on a ps3, I'd even say it looks better than Xenoverse 2. Quite the attention to detail at times (Frieza's transformations, Broly's charging effect) but also some rookie mistakes (somehow remembered SSJ Broly had blue hair but gave LSSJ blonde instead of green). I however did not like the combat much, it felt floaty and the super attacks lacked a lot of impact. Putting super attacks on the right stick was just an awful idea. Unless both my ps3 controllers were broken I had to mash that shit to continue my combos. Rush attack ranges were neutered to oblivion as well so unless you were within 10 feet of your enemy they weren't hitting. Blast deflection was a nice gimmick but I'm indifferent on the crash system.

The customization is nice, it allows there to not have a roster with 18 different Goku and Vegetas clogging it up though some absences both in roster and super attack were baffling. The camera was horrendous though. If you were near a wall you just had to let jesus take the wheel and hope either the ai knocked you away or stopped mashing long enough for you to rapid rise out of there.

I hope 2 fixes some of these issues but I doubt it.

Congrats to the devs for reaching such a massive milestone of like 5 million sales (at the time of writing this) in a couple days without even counting gamepass. Whether you hate the game or not, thats a feat. That being said, If I hear about this "pokemon killer" one more time I'm going to explode. I played for about 4 hours before couldn't continue playing. I do not tend to like survival games, theres too much babysitting and base building is never something I care about. If it wasn't for gamepass I wouldn't have even bothered. I hope for everyone who is actually enjoying it, they don't abandon the game like what happened to plenty of Early Access survival games of old.

Outside of them getting the pokemon style down (plagiarism allegations, ai art or whatever the fuck else I don't really care) for the pals and the fact they can be captured and used for battle, thats where the pokemon ends.
Battles are in real time, you're fighting with them and they tend to spam the same attack in my experience. There is no story that I ran into, so if you don't suffer from wanderlust syndrome you're gonna be trying to find fun with the genre staple of punching trees to get started. Its Ark but without dinosaurs. You WILL be building and you will be interacting with survival mechanics or you will have a bad time. You can then put your pals to work in the fields while others roll up with you to ice some guy, then catch that person you rolled up on and sell them too. You also gotta babysit your own character as well as your pals cuz you both got your survival meters to keep an eye on like hot and cold.

I really don't see this game posing any sort of "threat" to pokemon like the redditors want it to. These aren't even the same genre. If things that are actually close to pokemon in more ways then just "catch monster" like Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth, Monster Hunter Stories 2, Yo Kai watch, Dragon Quest Monsters and even SMTsona (who did the catching thing long before pokemon) didn't light a fire under their ass then I can't see this doing it. I hope thats the case too cuz if pokemon goes a survival crafting route, I'm gone.

I really wish this wasn't a rougelite. I just do not enjoy what makes that genre at a fundamental level (restarting from the beginning of a run when you die, having to rely on rng for builds and the procedural generation) by their nature no matter what they do to try and change things around, they get very repetitive after the first two runs for me and typically you need to do multiple complete runs to get the whole story regardless. If it wasn't for the story contained in this I would have continued to ignore it. While I do think Ragnarok's combat is better than God of War 2018's, it is not why I enjoyed the game and I still vastly prefer the style of combat from the original trilogy and Chains of Olympus to it. Speaking of, seeing aspects from those games was nice to see and I would see it as Santa Monica putting respect on what came before especially with a specific line of dialogue in its ending. Even with the story being as well done as it is, along with its ending and Christopher Judge continuing to kill it as always, it did not outweigh the fact that this dlc by design was combat oriented and while generally not daunting, even put difficulty modes in it, it did not feel worth the 5 or so runs it took to actually reach the payoff. I am not a "its the journey not the destination" person, the destination needs to be worth the effort it took to get there. It being free doesn't change how I feel about it and I gladly would have paid for a more God of War reboot duology styled dlc over this.

If I wasn't already a fan of Yuffie, I would have been after playing this. Such an adorable little thing she is and the fact her design wasn't changed shocked me. The moogle cape was pretty cute too though. She was just so fun to use with the ability to imbue your shuriken with different elements and the synergy mechanic was a fun change to the combat. A shame Sonon couldn't be controlled in battle cuz I do love me a combat staff but it was clear he's expected to be used as a meatshield cuz Yuffie is maybe 15% more durable than a piece of tissue paper. I liked that early on in the game Yuffie was doing her original victory animation after all the fights cuz its nice to see things like that not just disappear.

In terms of story, its not the best and its breakneck which is the opposite of the base game. Your have a handful of areas you're gonna go to but exploration is not the name of the game. Yet somehow I still found myself enjoying this dlc more than the base game. No, no cuz of my Yuffie bias but I think cuz it was wholly new it wasn't being constantly compared to the OG in my mind. I'm looking forward to running my OG Cloud, Red, Yuffie party in part 2 even more than before.

I initially was gonna wait until all the parts were out so I could play the whole game in succession despite my gripes but since I got a copy of Final Fantasy 16 for Christmas and I want to play it, I decided to play this now so I can appreciate the gameplay without comparing it to the style of 16 and potential reacclimating I would need to do.

And I'm going to get this out of the way, I am a big fan of the original FF7. Though 9 is my favorite, I find 7 to be the far easier game to "pick up and play" as far as jrpgs are concerned. I am one of those people who does not like the direction the remake went narrative wise. I put a fair bit of weight on narrative when it comes to this genre and I do not like that its this is undeniably a sequel. If I wanted a different game or sequel then I wouldn't have bought something labeled as a REmake of FF7. Quite frankly this has made me wary of every single remake announced after it pulling one of these which is not something I needed in regards to my entertainment. I refer to this game as FF7-2 for a reason. At the very least, since that cat is out of the bag, I can look at the later parts without that baggage of being what I expect a remake to be.

Due to feeling the need to have Midgar have enough content to be its own game, the pacing jumps between well done to slower than molasses going down a hill in Janaury. Even if I wasn't taking the time to do all the side quests, missions, weapon leveling etc I still feel these pacing issues would have happened. Also, walk n talks. I HATE WALK N TALKS, not just in this game but all games. Maybe its the Metal Gear head in me but just make them goddamn cutscenes. Making it interactive to have to keep pace with an npc or else they stop due to you being too far away is not worthwhile gameplay. Its Replay poison. There also just felt like there was too much meandering disguised as "worldbuilding" and "fleshing out midgar". Characters who weren't super fleshed out in the original got their due (mainly Jessie from Avalanche) and in terms of the rest of the main cast I enjoyed seeing aspects of them I didn't in the original game. I had several moments where I was smiling like a dumbass. Spending more time in sector 7 before the big event did add to the moment but even if it didn't, seeing that cutscene and aftermath still would have left quite the impression.
Graphically the game is beautiful, except for a couple moments when you're really high up and the landscape underneath had that "its a jpeg" look to them and the two FMVs near the end where they were visibly worse but that one is clearly not in engine since it has Cloud wielding the buster sword despite me not using it at that time.

Gameplay wise I thought the remake was good. The combat felt very good to engage with (except for one aspect I will get into later) and swapping between characters was fast but making magic in of itself and giving orders to ai controller members need the atb system felt more like it halted combat flow more than helped imo. Also the fact using items needed that same bar, which on hard you can't use items at all which makes no sense since thats the difficulty I'd actually need to use them on, made me use them inside of battle less. That classic difficulty is a spit in the face though. There is nothing "classic" about characters moving, attacking and guarding on their own while you wait for the atb bar to fill up. Classic would be them standing in the line not doing a goddamn thing until I gave an input. I don't believe character in any turn based adjacent combat should move a damn muscle unless they were given auto type equipment and that why I didn't like Yakuza 7's combat despite being a turn based supporter. Materia also didn't create a fresh one once you mastered it which threw me for a loop and I'm honestly kind of sad about that, especially the enemy skill materia. Leveling up the weapons I am indifferent about. One one hand it feels like another grind to inflate playtime, but on the other hand the stats are worthwhile as is getting the specific abilities. The fact you could just add materia slots to weapons is a game changer. Having summon materia have its own dedicated slot away from your normal slots was a fantastic idea and whoever decided that should get a raise. The more limited materia selection of part 1 here is kind of detrimental to me but I fully understand why and won't fault the game for that. No playable Red also soured me cuz he's one of my favorites to use. I learned like a day before I started this playthrough that basically nothing is gonna carry over to Rebirth so I stopped caring about maxing all the materia out since I have no desire to play this game on hard where it would be necessary to have them. That did take the wind out of my sails a bit for the upcoming parts though I won't lie. Shame it ain't like .hack GU where the good stuff carries over. "But balancing!" Get outta here. If a ps2 game could figure it out, so can this.

So that one aspect of the combat that I alluded to earlier is how the game handles phase changes alongside its break/stagger mechanic. I just do no like break/stagger mechanics in general and how they are implemented in almost all jrgps that use them except like Bravely 2/Octopath. In 7R's case, it doesn't feel like I'm building up to this big damage but instead feels like my damage is nerfed for no reason until I hit the enemy enough. And then theres the cutscene phase changes...In most boss fights right about when I finally filled up that stagger meter the cutscene would activate and all that work is reset cuz no it doesn't carry over. Its just really annoying, it unnecessarily drags out fights and I don't understand the fascination with these things being put in jrpgs. The fight wouldn't be an more of a slugfest if this system was removed imo.

I enjoyed majority of the remake music and I'm excited for how something like Cosmo Canyon will sound like. Yes I found its disc but I wanna hear it without jukebox crust. I do like that the discs were a thing, cuz I really do love Tifa's theme. Its probably my favorite in 7's entire ost. I hope some sort of portable music system is implemented in REbirth if the disc system carries over. Actually since shit doesn't carry over it doesn't matter. Guess I'll stick to spotify if I wanna boot up a good chocobo theme. Can I also say I like how theres an npc in the party who will sing the classic victory fanfare since the games have gone action? Bonus points to the colosseum for having it as well as the classic victory animations AND having the characters line up while doing it.

I assume I'll continue being late to this party when REbirth and whatever part 3 is called comes out but if you're gonna split what was once a single multi disc game into three separate things Hobbit movie style then I'll stick to paying $20 each piece. That'll be the cost of one "new" by the end of it and I'll have the complete ff7 experience like I do on ps1. I probably come off as bitter, hater of change yada yada but I really did enjoy my time playing it for the most part (damn stagger system) which is why the score probably doesn't seem like it matches my words.