I'm going to break my trend by reviewing this game before I finish all optional content, I'll explain later.
Gameplay wise, this feels like FF7-gone-Kingdom Hearts (apparently it's kinda close to Birth By Sleep, but I haven't played that one so I can't say personally), it is pretty fun in short bursts, especially if you get decent equipment.
The story is fine but most of what happens really doesn't feel like something you couldn't just infer after playing FF7. It's cool seeing how Cloud came to look upto Zack, how Zack did the same for Angeal, and so on, but it really doesn't feel super essential for the experience. The end, at the very least, is genuinely emotional and my favorite part. Also the battle theme goes really hard.
What's stopping me from going for the platinum trophy is how the side content ruined the game for me. They're very repetitive, have the same enemies and area layouts, and have huge difficulty spikes where you're forced to grind XP. I really don't want to use AFK methods because in my eyes, if the best way to power through a game is to not play it then that's a fundamentally broken way to [not] play it. The fact that lots of essential items are held hostage by these huge one-shot difficulty spikes means you'll have to do EVEN MORE grinding. It ended up breaking me, and I just finished the story and will move on to another game.
It's a bit disappointing, after everything is said and done, it works as a decent spinoff to add more context to FF7's story, even if it's ultimately not vital.
I might come back to this in a long while to give it another try at completion, but for now I had my fun and want to move on. I've completed much harder games, but this requires more patience than I am willing to give.
6/10
Gameplay wise, this feels like FF7-gone-Kingdom Hearts (apparently it's kinda close to Birth By Sleep, but I haven't played that one so I can't say personally), it is pretty fun in short bursts, especially if you get decent equipment.
The story is fine but most of what happens really doesn't feel like something you couldn't just infer after playing FF7. It's cool seeing how Cloud came to look upto Zack, how Zack did the same for Angeal, and so on, but it really doesn't feel super essential for the experience. The end, at the very least, is genuinely emotional and my favorite part. Also the battle theme goes really hard.
What's stopping me from going for the platinum trophy is how the side content ruined the game for me. They're very repetitive, have the same enemies and area layouts, and have huge difficulty spikes where you're forced to grind XP. I really don't want to use AFK methods because in my eyes, if the best way to power through a game is to not play it then that's a fundamentally broken way to [not] play it. The fact that lots of essential items are held hostage by these huge one-shot difficulty spikes means you'll have to do EVEN MORE grinding. It ended up breaking me, and I just finished the story and will move on to another game.
It's a bit disappointing, after everything is said and done, it works as a decent spinoff to add more context to FF7's story, even if it's ultimately not vital.
I might come back to this in a long while to give it another try at completion, but for now I had my fun and want to move on. I've completed much harder games, but this requires more patience than I am willing to give.
6/10