wavetree
48 reviews liked by wavetree
I may be one of the few people who actually enjoys the Ubisoft formula (I actually LIKED Far Cry's towers!), but even this game can be a bit much. The gameplay itself emulates Far Cry but with enemies who are either 4 feet smaller than you or in mech suits, so it's of good quality. The world for this game is easily one of the best looking games I've ever seen, and the amount of imagination and love poured into both fern and fauna is astonishing. What really hurts this game is it's open world exploration loop. While you no longer need to climb towers or anything else to arbitrarily reveal nearby landmarks, anything that you CAN find in the world struggles to be interesting. No interesting quest lines, no secret easter eggs, and no major sense of variety.
The repetition cannot be overstated. You will find either a plant you tap to receive skill points, a plant you tap to give you a (very) small permanent health boost, or do a small twirl of your looking joystick to fix an object. While there are some exceptions, such as the memory painting activities and the totem scavenger hunts, these are absolutely overwhelmed by the sheer number of other repetitive functions.
The writing itself also struggles to be particularly interesting with very flat characters and unremarkable dialogue. Some credit has to be given to the player VOs, as they absolutely sell the joy, terror, and surprise you will put them through in the 30-60 hours it takes to beat this game. They'll even emit an audible "Ow!" when you bonk your head against an object above you! Unfortunately, almost nothing notable happens outside the already mostly ho-hum main campaign. My only other exception is the final level, which actually manages to live up to it's expectations and deliver a memorable conclusion to the game. If only it didn't take dozens upon dozens of hours doing boring fetch quests and touching plants to get there.
The repetition cannot be overstated. You will find either a plant you tap to receive skill points, a plant you tap to give you a (very) small permanent health boost, or do a small twirl of your looking joystick to fix an object. While there are some exceptions, such as the memory painting activities and the totem scavenger hunts, these are absolutely overwhelmed by the sheer number of other repetitive functions.
The writing itself also struggles to be particularly interesting with very flat characters and unremarkable dialogue. Some credit has to be given to the player VOs, as they absolutely sell the joy, terror, and surprise you will put them through in the 30-60 hours it takes to beat this game. They'll even emit an audible "Ow!" when you bonk your head against an object above you! Unfortunately, almost nothing notable happens outside the already mostly ho-hum main campaign. My only other exception is the final level, which actually manages to live up to it's expectations and deliver a memorable conclusion to the game. If only it didn't take dozens upon dozens of hours doing boring fetch quests and touching plants to get there.
Extremely mid and far too long, but nice to play in short bursts
A graphical showcase for sure but after a while just makes me feel like I'm playing Far Cry again. In the way that enemies are pretty easy, content variety is sparse, and it becomes a slug to do anything but the main missions.
Fun enough for co-op though.
Fun enough for co-op though.
All the parts that are faithfully re-created are incredible. I got teary-eyed during a bunch of different moments. However, the story changes (especially to a pivotal scene) and some really tedious gameplay elements sprinkled in at some parts make this far from perfect.
And yet, its still the best FF since FFX (2001). Yikes.
As I was playing this game, I kept a running note of thoughts I had about the game. I'm pasting them here:
Pros:
- Solid gameplay, has increasing depth as the game goes on. Combat is really fun and engaging throughout.
- Retains the spirit of the original: Its lighthearted and goofy, while still balancing the tone of the rest of the story.
- Most side quests are worth it for the character interactions or the reward (summon battles become easier, new materia).
- Music is fantastic. There’s so much effort put into making sure every character, every region, and every scenario has an accompanying soundtrack. Nobuo Uematsu still got it.
- Mini games are abundant and fun, once again staying true to the original
- The way they've recreated all the areas and their traversal options (buggy, bronco) is incredible and done exactly right. I am in awe of what the environments look like.
- There’s just generally so much love and care put into recreating this world and its characters, and it shows.
Cons:
- Some parts are REALLY tedious. There’s sections where you have to slowly move through corridors, or perform boring tasks to progress through the level. A glaring example of this is Chapter 11 that has a 2 hour section that is extremely boring and should not be mandatory.
- Writing for all new content is bad. There’s also generally a bunch of unnecessary exposition.
- Chadley is a really annoying character, and his Battle Simulator for summons is unnecessary (Summons should be fought in the wild)
- Ending is unnecessarily convoluted and antithetical to the ethos of the story. The emotional impact is lost and does an injustice to the most important character in the story. All the “multiverse” stuff hurts this game significantly. Ending aside, all the other multiverse content (Zack, all of Chapter 14) is incredibly stupid, and also just has no real impact on the core story beats.
And yet, its still the best FF since FFX (2001). Yikes.
As I was playing this game, I kept a running note of thoughts I had about the game. I'm pasting them here:
Pros:
- Solid gameplay, has increasing depth as the game goes on. Combat is really fun and engaging throughout.
- Retains the spirit of the original: Its lighthearted and goofy, while still balancing the tone of the rest of the story.
- Most side quests are worth it for the character interactions or the reward (summon battles become easier, new materia).
- Music is fantastic. There’s so much effort put into making sure every character, every region, and every scenario has an accompanying soundtrack. Nobuo Uematsu still got it.
- Mini games are abundant and fun, once again staying true to the original
- The way they've recreated all the areas and their traversal options (buggy, bronco) is incredible and done exactly right. I am in awe of what the environments look like.
- There’s just generally so much love and care put into recreating this world and its characters, and it shows.
Cons:
- Some parts are REALLY tedious. There’s sections where you have to slowly move through corridors, or perform boring tasks to progress through the level. A glaring example of this is Chapter 11 that has a 2 hour section that is extremely boring and should not be mandatory.
- Writing for all new content is bad. There’s also generally a bunch of unnecessary exposition.
- Chadley is a really annoying character, and his Battle Simulator for summons is unnecessary (Summons should be fought in the wild)
- Ending is unnecessarily convoluted and antithetical to the ethos of the story. The emotional impact is lost and does an injustice to the most important character in the story. All the “multiverse” stuff hurts this game significantly. Ending aside, all the other multiverse content (Zack, all of Chapter 14) is incredibly stupid, and also just has no real impact on the core story beats.
Inscryption
2021
"deck building" and "roguelike" are keywords I typically avoid while buying games, but Inscryption came highly recommended to me despite that. I'm so glad I gave it a shot. This game subverted all expectations I had - it's stylish, thoughtful, and addicting. If you are like me and tend to dislike card games, this game is still very much worth a shot if you're even a little bit curious. Well worth your time.
Tunic
2022
This review contains spoilers
The highest high I've gotten from a game in a long time, and the harshest anticlimax too. Like a train running full speed into a mountain.
It follows in that Fez/The Witness lineage of making you feel like an absolute genius for solving the puzzles, especially the later ones, because it trusts you to figure things out. The main gimmick of the game is the in-game instruction manual, which is written almost entirely in a fictional language but with just enough English to guide you in the right direction. It also does that satisfying thing where the puzzles redefine how you view the world itself while story events make changes to it. It's clever, and it means the backtracking is never a chore.
That means you spend a lot of time invested in this world. So when the ending is effectively a note from the developers that says "You won, good job :)" it rings hollow. There is an ending cutscene but it does not match the stakes at all.
What even were the stakes, though? Did I care about the story too much? Did the developers only intend for the events to have ludological meanings and not narrative ones? It's a simple story, no more complex than most SNES games, but it is a story. Maybe there's some Lore that would explain it if I spent more time digging. I have no indication it would be worth finding even if it is there.
It follows in that Fez/The Witness lineage of making you feel like an absolute genius for solving the puzzles, especially the later ones, because it trusts you to figure things out. The main gimmick of the game is the in-game instruction manual, which is written almost entirely in a fictional language but with just enough English to guide you in the right direction. It also does that satisfying thing where the puzzles redefine how you view the world itself while story events make changes to it. It's clever, and it means the backtracking is never a chore.
That means you spend a lot of time invested in this world. So when the ending is effectively a note from the developers that says "You won, good job :)" it rings hollow. There is an ending cutscene but it does not match the stakes at all.
What even were the stakes, though? Did I care about the story too much? Did the developers only intend for the events to have ludological meanings and not narrative ones? It's a simple story, no more complex than most SNES games, but it is a story. Maybe there's some Lore that would explain it if I spent more time digging. I have no indication it would be worth finding even if it is there.
Tunic
2022
Had a great time with this one. The Zelda inspirations are obvious and plentiful but not ham-fisted and had Nintendo released exactly this game with a few visual tweaks and called it a minor Zelda game, people would have gone apeshit for it just the same. Hits that perfect 10-15 hour length and just as soon as I started to feel the slightest bit like the whole thing was dragging a bit, the endgame turned into this nonstop rush of secrets and formerly hidden treasures and I could have gone for another five. Even busted out some pencil and paper for some of the more challenging puzzles, triggering a delightful and specific nostalgic feeling I haven't had in gaming since The Witness. Just a beauty from start to finish. And if this was truly "Souls-hard" then I can handle Souls games, no problem.
Tunic
2022
Very pretty and I loved how it controlled. Difficulty was fair, kinda forgot shield was a thing so I mostly focused on dodging. Though I feel like some things at endgame were put in for tedious sake. So, I liked how I had to figure out what to do from incomplete pages from a virtual manual with a language you can't read. Its just you and your intuition
Tunic
2022
This seems nice but aside from being a little bit of Dark Souls and a little bit of Zelda, it doesn't do enough to hold my attention. Not for me at this time.
It Takes Two
2021
I'm so bummed out by this. We wanted to love it so badly, but the writing was intolerable. The wife is mean, the husband is annoying, the book pelvic thrusts... that's the character dynamic and it doesn't get any deeper than that. You never know why they're getting divorced in the first place, you get "you're never home" "yeah well someone has to make money to pay for food" and some bickering about them both mutually failing to do chores. Their reconnecting feels so forced and unearned, they're so nasty to each other the whole time and in contrast, the bits we see of them talking about the divorce they seem pretty mature and reasonable about it. They really should have gotten the divorce, it would genuinely improve the game, they have no chemistry and it did not feel like they actually fixed things. The plot is just a mashup of Freaky Friday and Inside Out, while forgetting that those narratives actually have character development to earn their narrative beats.
So many of the gameplay gimmicks are just taking something from another older game and doing a lite version of it for about 10 minutes, getting you to just start to like it before taking it away and never returning to it. Don't get too attached, it'll be over in no time and then you'll do a different gimmick. You'll have Crash Bandicoot running towards the camera, Mario Sunshine fludd gameplay, Mario Galaxy gravity gimmicks, Diablo, a bunch of Ratchet and Clank... they actually do a solid job of mimicking these games, they clearly understand why they worked, but they never quite go the distance with these gimmicks and they're over just as you're trying to figure out how they'll escalate it and really hammer the concept home... no escalation, just an abrupt ending, like the story.
Lastly, I really did think the elephant scene was gonna be overblown. Nah, it's as unpleasant and mean-spirited as I've read prior. It'd be so easy to make it work with the narrative, too... have them say how they were senselessly hurting their child, or that they were being selfish and short-sighted... nope. They do it and never remark upon it again.
So many of the gameplay gimmicks are just taking something from another older game and doing a lite version of it for about 10 minutes, getting you to just start to like it before taking it away and never returning to it. Don't get too attached, it'll be over in no time and then you'll do a different gimmick. You'll have Crash Bandicoot running towards the camera, Mario Sunshine fludd gameplay, Mario Galaxy gravity gimmicks, Diablo, a bunch of Ratchet and Clank... they actually do a solid job of mimicking these games, they clearly understand why they worked, but they never quite go the distance with these gimmicks and they're over just as you're trying to figure out how they'll escalate it and really hammer the concept home... no escalation, just an abrupt ending, like the story.
Lastly, I really did think the elephant scene was gonna be overblown. Nah, it's as unpleasant and mean-spirited as I've read prior. It'd be so easy to make it work with the narrative, too... have them say how they were senselessly hurting their child, or that they were being selfish and short-sighted... nope. They do it and never remark upon it again.