This game is a masterwork. You can tell that every mind behind it is deeply passionate about the source material. All of new minigames are so fun, I love seeing that funny autistic man be put in situations. Every new place that you go to has this whacky situation going on. I especially loved the card tournament and its final competitor, not to mention the card game itself with its crazy subplot. Every time i think "OMG are they gonna keep this from the original??" the answer is "Yes AND we made it ten times better." The combat has gotten a needed upgrade, I loved how the relationship mechanics tied into battle abilities. Every character is fun to play in their own way. Yuffie is amazing for putting in quick elemental damage, Barret staggers fast, etc. Every part of this story kept me guessing up to the end credits. The open world is actually amazing and full of fun places to explore and good excuses to explore them. Frankly, my only issues with this game, and the things holding it back from five stars, are towards the beginning of the game. the flashback chapter had really weird pacing during the fire and a QTE when there really shouldnt have been one. completely took me out of the experience. and i said i loved the open world, but that wasnt true until i got to the second zone; being dropped into open grasslands that are easy to traverse (every subsequent zone has a different breed of native chocobo and thus a different way to get around) made it feel as sparse as any ubisoft game, and the towers didnt help either. but once we properly got into the swing of things, i didnt have a complaint for the rest of the game.
any chump who tells you this is a mockery of FFVII's legacy or whatever, doesnt like enjoying things. they didnt like the beach section, or the sidequests, or the relationship mechanics, or the combat. they just want pure unaltered Final Fantasy VII (1997). they were never going to like this game no matter what, because the game that they ACTUALLY want to play came out 27 years ago, and theyre playing this instead of that. so ignore them.
This game, like Remake, by no means is supposed to replace the original. it complements it. it pays homage. its a labor of love. go in wanting to have fun and youll have fun. i know i did, and i WILL be 100%ing this game, just give me time.

this game took a really interesting concept and took 20 hours to do anything interesting with it. the writing has its moments, but overall i think this game has the weakest story in the entire story, besides 1. the combat mechanics arent memorable,the multiclass system is interesting but frankly still quite limited in scope, the world felt not fleshed out, and my wife and I decided to skip the post-game and DLC because it was THAT disappointing. This game does thankfully have good difficulty balancing so that i could safely do side content without overleveling, but said side content was mostly lackluster and theres almost no good loot in this entire game.

This is definitely one of the more fun action FF games, although its bogged down by a couple superfluous systems. The story is deserving of the name, and actually adds deep complexity to the original FF. the settings are directly ripped from the rest of the series, and I highly enjoy that. There's a lot of variety in unlockable jobs, but frankly i picked the two i liked and almost never strayed from that, although being able to swap between two on a whim really helped. As soon as I was given the ability to take pot shots at range with a lance, I kept that for the rest of the game, and it never stopped being affective.
Loot always comes in a deluge. make sure you turn on autodismantle because your inventory will fill up fast and you dont want to spend time in your menus discarding stuff yourself. upgrading your equipment is never helpful, because it'll be replaced before you can get used to it, so all in all i feel like the equipment systems needed an overhaul.
Overall tho i had a lot of fun tho

Bigger and better than the first two games in almost every way. both characters revamped with new movement and combat abilities with a staggering amount of variety. A bigger and refreshed New York City, and a story that doesn't disappoint.
The parts of this game that do disappoint are enough to keep it from a five star score, but not enough to say that this is definitely the best so far. Many minor bugs that forced me to reload checkpoints, I missed the abilities that were tied to what suit you're wearing, there were FAR too many MCU suits for my liking, and It felt like stealth took a backseat in this game.
Overall though? very worth my time, and an easy platinum trophy.

Old and butthurt Final Fantasy fans will tell you that there hasn't been a 'true' FF game since X or even IX. But I've never been one for the 'No true Scotsman' fallacy, and on a core level I believe that not only does XVI play about the same as any other Final Fantasy -- especially the ATB focused ones -- I would also argue that every aspect of this game is what the series was going for from the start.

First off, the ability system in this game is said by director Hiroshi Takai to emulate that of the job system in V.
The second thing is that that turnbased gameplay where people stand around trading blows was always supposed to represent more high octane action -- fidelity just wasn't there yet so the cool action had to stay in your imagination.
The third thing is that the action is really easy. like, HEINOUSLY easy, and the hard mode isn't unlocked until the New Game+, which is one of my big gripes. There are mid-fight checkpoints, said checkpoints restore all curatives, and doing any meaningful amount of side content will make you so far overleveled that you can just turn off your brain. In this aspect, it fails to be a very tense action game because its hard to fail, unlike in FFVIIRemake where you have to actually be good at videogames. This gives XVI an opportunity to shine in other departments though, even just sticking to the combat. by the time you're ten hours into the game, you will have so many different abilities always coming off cooldown that the game ceases to be a hackandslash (Final May Cry as I heard some calling it before release) and becomes more like a cooldown management simulator, like Kingdom Hearts III.... or Final Fantasy IX. or X, for that matter. All most FF gamesboil down to is spam Attack or make every character use their optimal moves for a given fight, and heal when you take too much damage. Sound familiar?
Yes, XVI lets you move in a 3D space, and the enemies throw attacks at you that you're supposed to dodge, but its not really on a level of a typical action game. nothing does any meaningful damage to you, and curatives come in abundance. Nothing can stop you. any real action this game has is more akin to the tactical maneuvering in XII or the holding down one button forever in XV.
So yeah I think XVI has combat that is in the spirit of the most well loved era of FF games, and it does it with much more style and player engagement than VIII every could with its timed button presses.
In aspects outside of the combat, XVI also shines. the world is very fun to explore, the side content is worth doing, the characters are well fleshed out and I enjoy getting to know them, the music is on par with XIV's quality, and Clive is the best FF protag since Zidane. I enjoyed the hell out of this game.

It's RE4! It's not really meaningfully different in enough ways to have been worth a remake. It's definitely way more polished but I really never thought that the PS4 version of the HD remaster needed any extra attention. I think that we're reaching the point in games where even nearly 20 year old games stand on their own and don't need full remakes. WHERE is my Code Veronica????
That said, this game was definitely worth my time and I would consider it the definitive way to play the game, although the VR version will always be my favorite.
This game isn't exactly a carbon copy, most everything is just slightly different, so if you're intimately familiar with the original, you will notice, and it'll definitely feel fresh. Overall I'm not exactly impressed but it was fun.

The new definitive Theatrythm game. it has an ONGODLY amount of songs, and the move onto consoles allows for more complex gameplay. I'm a huge fan of this game and its sheer amount of characters. my only complaints are stuff that wasn't included (Where's Cosmo Canyon?? Stand By Me??? Descendant of Shinobi???? Selphie????) This game feels like a true love letter to the FF series as a whole. Some of the medley songs actually brought a tear to my eye.
I have already put 30 hours into this game and I expect to come back to it many times over the years.

I actually love this game.
For me, Sonic frontiers represents the time very early in our lives where we weren't old enough to have full grasp on how to play a game yet, and so we would just wander around and do nothing in particular in open ended games like Vice City, Spyro, or Ratchet & Clank.
The open zones are fairly basic, sure, but for a while I really got a lot of enjoyment out of just running around -- because it feels good! The controls are the best they've ever been in a Sonic game, the enviroments are beautiful, and I've always wanted the freedom to just run a marathon as Sonic around an open world, without the constant trappings of stages directing you down a certain path, tight level design that slows down the action, and godforsaken grades at the end of stages. All that stuff is relegated to the cyber space stages, which are littered around the map and feature old recycled locales, and the same tired level designs from Boost Sonic games of old just to remind me how sick of it all I am.
Frontiers is a game where they drop you into an open world, with lots of collectables to pick up and lots of springs and grind rails to screw around on, and then say "okay this is the whole game. have at it." AND THAT'S FUCKING REFRESHING!
The combat is awesome too. there's all kinds of cool moves to perform, and it properly gives you action that doesn't compromise on speed. It's fun to run circles around guys and then bop them all on the heads. Hell yeah.
Also, I love the writing of this game. the world building is phenomenal. uncovering exactly what happened in this setting is spooky as hell, Sage is a really cool character, and the story feels super grounded. I haven't enjoyed the story of a sonic game this much since SA1. Though I do wish some components of the story got touched on more, and the ending didn't feel as rushed. It's clear that Ian Flynn belongs in the writing room for these games, but he's gonna need more experience at it.
Overall, I think it was a really good experience worth my time, and I don't often get to say that about a Sonic game.
And I've heard all the takes already. Even from friends. Sonic fans are fucking insufferable, and will never be satiated because they have a very narrow view of what they want out of a Sonic game and don't know how to shut up and just have fun for five minutes. I personally welcome our new open zone overlords! Sonic Team has said that open zone is the future of the Sonic series, and personally I fully welcome that. Frontiers has the bones of what could be a masterpiece of a game, and my biggest issue of the Sonic series as a whole is how too quickly Sega abandons every good concept that just needs another game for it to get better. If we get one or two more of these, I'll be happy, especially if SA3 happens and manages to merge design philosophies of open zone and pre-boost era Sonic.