"I'LL CRUSH YOU"

~me to ANYONE who talks shit about jack garland in any fucking capacity. the protagonist to surpass caim has arrived

EDIT:

ok here's an actual review - this is the best action game to come out in well over a decade. play on hard with party disabled and you'll have a thoroughly challenging experience with some of the best boss design the genre's seen period. come for the stellar combat; stay for more of it plus a godlike narrative. jack garland IS the best protagonist in ff

and he did it HIS way

Wrażenia z dema. Początkowo się prawie odbiłem po kwadransie, ale zacisnąłem zęby i mi się zaczęło naprawdę podobać. System walki jest interesujący, chociaż nie udało mi się ani razu świadomie skorzystać z tzw. ability combos. Nie było tego w tutorialu, opis w UI jest lakoniczny.

Gra jest BRZYDKA. Ale tak naprawdę brzydka. W trybie 60fps wszystko jest rozmazane, a w trybie 30fps klatki mocno szarpią.

Ostatecznie gra męczy. Walka, walka, walka. Eksploracja nie jest ciekawa, ponieważ lokacje są nijakie. Brakuje fabuły, bohaterowie się prawie nie odzywają, a to co mówią jest zapychaczem bez znaczenia. Bez fabuły na poziomie Final Fantasy nie będzie mi się chciało w to grać.

(Review of the demo)

This game being the largest meme aside, the demo was pretty sick. It pretty much boils down to the combat system, which the snippets from the trailer made look very just "blargh swing beeg sword around and glory kill", when it's surprisingly intricate and cool. I'm not the expert on these sorts of things by any means, but the action/jrpg gameplay fusion is really sweet, and for me scratches a similar sort of itch to something like kingdom hearts. Switching Jobs being something you do as an animation cancel, cool useage of parries and blocking, even a pretty neat little blue mage ability stealing system, it's all pretty damn cool and when it comes together in the demo's one boss fight, which is really good, its a great time.

There's clearly a lot of influence from Nioh here, with it's job switching taking the place of stance switching, the level design, demons souls shortcuts and the bosses. And it actually works.

Of course there's the whole CHAOS thing to address, which is here in spades and is delightfully stupid. Fortunately, when you get some other clothes on your main dude (which you will do in literally 5 minutes) and play for a little bit, it seems a bit less absurd and the style meshes together a bit better. It is still delightfully cheesy and at least somewhat aware about it though, particulary with the bombastic fnal moments of the game's boss fight, where an EDM version of FF1 music is playing over it and it turns a bit into metal gear rising.

Honestly, my main problems with the demo are that your supporting party members feel absolutely worthless and are more of a nuisance in battle (and frankly, dont have much to say in story), and the progression/loot being extremely fast and demanding menuing after basically every battle. That second one has probably been amplified to get more done in the demo, granted, but I dont think i'll be fond of it's loot system regardless, it feels a bit overdone for very minor benefits.
Also, as someone who, frankly, is pretty damn shite at action games, I'm willing to bet one of the mechanics here is utterly busted - such as the ability that prevents you taking hitstun, the animation canclling magic block that gives you MP, etc - that I just can't extract myself. Clearly i think people better than me at this sort of things need to give it a look before any conclusions are made on that though.

Overall, it's a good start, frankly. The trailer might be hilarious, and the game is a bit too, but frankly it doesn't do it justice. If you have a PS5 absolutely check it out. Yes, it's a meme, but there's definetly something cool here, and frankly, the bizzare direction for a retelling of FF1 that's been taken is kinda something worth seeing for yourself, like it or not.

Also, yes, the lines "Chaos." >"No, I am become Chaos, who are you">"We're here to kill chaos" basically happen in that exact order within 30 seconds. Its fantastic.

Temporary Beta Score: 3/5

The beta this time around was honestly way more impressive. While I still feel this is too far away from what makes FF well, FF, I still had a decent time with the new level. Kinda nice to see 13 music make an appearance but I hope other FF titles are homaged as well since I've never played nor do I care about 13. While this demo was a general improvement, I do have one massive complaint, that being the performance which is significantly worse. Many times I'd find the game freezing up and the framerate would drop significantly. This is acceptable in a switch game like Age of Calamity but a lot less acceptable when it's running on next-gen hardware.

i seriously did not expect to enjoy this game nearly as much as i did? i preordered it, because some friends and i thought the E3 trailer was funny. which, yes, the game is very unintentionally funny (jack literally listens to limp bizkit. this is not a joke), but it's also really good.

i'm grateful i went into this having played final fantasy 1 in advance just so i could catch those extra details, but honestly i think it's fine to play without that. the story starts out very... awkwardly. but i swear you have to be patient with it, because it seriously does make sense eventually. it absolutely blew my mind with a nice blend of predictable and unpredictable twists.

the gameplay is an absolute blast, too. i really loved how much experimenting with and building up every class was encouraged. i don't know if i'll 100% this game, but i definitely want to go through and finish some of the postgame content at some point.

i have only one gripe relevant enough to bring up, the fact that the world travel felt a bit hollow. i think this game's fine not being open world or anything like that, but i feel there could have been something done to make the campaign screen feel more alive.