130 reviews liked by ARW3


Still playing this with friends but feel like i know most of what i want to say about it. While the gameplay loop turns out to be extremely repetitive with the same objectives repeating constantly, the game turns out to be incredibly fun due to the shenanigans and funny situations that happen due to Friendly Fire and general lethality of the weapons and enemies.

However, it's clear that this game was not ready for the popularity it got as two months later we are still having connectivity issues, crossplay not working and some general bugs. With a bit more polish I would love this even more.

This game is peak in so many regards but also fumbles in so many ways when it comes to combat, quest design and level design. This is probably the highest I’ve rated a game that i have so many complaints with that’s how good the peaks of this game are.

Combat is restrictive, barebones and often plain unfun. 4 hit combo and that’s it? Really? Launcher tied to another character? 6 ability slots while having 30+ abilities and they have cooldowns? Large enemies that don’t reach to you, can’t be juggled and are just wet noodle sponges slap fests to fight? Why would you make an action game like this?

Any time your abilities are on cooldown vs a larger enemy with a stamina bar you can only mash square and do the same 4 attacks over and over. Or weave in some bad feeling magic follow ups to increase it to an samey 8 hit combo. Enemies have too much HP for how boring they are to fight and how little variety they have.

I understand the game can’t be at an 11 of hype at all times or else it would lose its impact but the rise actions of its structure are so BORING. Gotta get margret her 7 shit potatoes for 3 hours before we can actually move the plot forward. There are these little arcs when you get to a new town that has a roadblock preventing you from getting to a bosses’ palace that you must get around and they get so fucking old after the 2nd time they do this. The game could have easily 15 hours shorter with all these boring repetitive shit cut out

85% of the side quest are the shit quests from FF14 you ignore and walk past unless you are an absolute fiend that should be locked in a cage and need something left to do after playing it for 7000 hours. They sprinkle you with some good ones every once in a while and it isn’t until the literal final hour do you get all the good side quests with your friends.

The open world is barren and has zero reason to traverse. The game is an assortment of hallways they tried to obfuscate by putting them in empty warehouses. I’d rather it just have Stranger of Paradise’s level structure because that was too the point.

The music to this game is incredible. People finally getting a taste of some of the best FF music now that it isn’t locked behind 300+ hours into an mmo. The performances are great and the sound design for the main villain is really cool. I wished they stuck speaking gibberish like they did at the start.

I was really engaged with the story even if it blue balls you a bit too much in areas and there is one character that may as well be a talking map because all they do is show up to give the game of thrones opening styled map cutscenes of the world.

The scale of boss fights and set pieces are insane. Normies got baited thinking they were buying game of thrones only to find out square secretly made the sequel to asura’s wrath and the hypest kaiju/toku game on the market. Holy fuck those behomet and titan fights. I’ll be thinking about those for a while

Itsudatte itsudatte itsudatte...

Writing this at the moment of my beating my first run but the sheer dopamine this game creates is incredible. One of the most unique ideas for a roguelike deckbuilder using the game of poker as the base. One of those "one more run" games in which you won't stop trying to discover new combinations.

This one is so tough for me, and honestly, there is no way I can ever be 100% unbiased. Let's start from the top. OG FF7 is one of my favorite video games of all time. Between that and MGS it is what got me into gaming in the first place, and I can still remember sneaking up late at night to play more of these games on the PS1.

So when a remake of this was announced, I was obviously nervous, and oddly enough, the first Remake game did almost nothing to squash that even though I really did like it. It was clear they were going with a bold, new, different direction, and despite my squabbles, I couldn't help be just beyond in awe with what they were trying to accomplish, but it really felt like something I'd need to wait and see the whole way through before I could give a full opinion on.

Another game later, I still feel kinda the same way? I really do like this game, along with remake, I think they're both spectacular. I also think, they will NEVER live up or surpass the OG game to me, and that's okay too.

I do think this game is too bloated. It's also way too story light until the last chunk of the game. Really we don't get major story stuff until chapter 12 (though it starts getting better in eight).

I think the side quests are improved from Remake, but still not great here.

Also for the love of god, I like the mini games, but not EVERYTHING needs to be a mini game. Some sections were an actual slog cause of that.

The open world while solid and fun, does nothing that hasn't been done before, and can't match some of the top tier open worlds to me (RDR2, Horizon FW).

What this game excels at is the world, and character building. It's tremendous. It makes you really fall in love with every one of these characters, and shines a light one more time on Aerith, one of the greatest female characters in video game history.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with this game, even more than Remake (even though I think Remake does somethings better). I think this one will grow on me over time, and maybe even increase in score, and who knows, maybe after the third game, I'll learn to love them all even more.

Oh Suicide Squad. Where do I even begin with this fucking one.

Let's start at the top. I genuinely think this game got did dirty by gaming journalists, and just gamers in general. I think 99% of the hate from gamers come from people who have never, and have no intention of playing this game.

My background. I'm a primarily SP gamer, who does not like live service, does not play online, and really never been into loot score games. That being said, as a GIANT batman fan, and a rocksteady fan, I had to go into this one and give it a fair shot. And to be honest, most of what was here I dug.

The story is genuinely great. It's hilarious from start to finish, the suicide squad themselves are written great (Boomerang and King Shark are easily the highlights here). Getting to go around and fight each justice league member as the bad guy, as a young Addi's dream come true, and was so awesome to experience.

All the boss fights were really fun (and just the gameplay in general, it was really fast, responsive and felt slick to traverse.) I mained as Harley, and I love how you could have a totally different experience depending on who you played as.

Now some negatives:

First of all, I had to drop the game for a period because of a "loading metroplis" bug. Un acceptable, no reason this game should be always online. The side quests, are really bad. I love them introducing Penguin, and a really cool new version of Ivy, but then doing jack all with the character development. It was clear this game was tugged in SO many different directions, and really didn't know what it wanted to be at the end of the day.

Honestly I was at a very solid 7/10 for this, but I had to drop half a point for the ending. Just totally anti climactic, and clearly content was cut for future live service stuff, which I have no interest in taking a part in.

This game is a giant mixed bag, and it's such a shame because there's stuff here I genuinely love, but stuff that also frustrates me that could have been easily avoided. Overall though, I still enjoyed my time with it, and it's no where NEAR as bad as people are making out it to be.

Give it a chance yourself sometime, I certainly, won't root for Rocksteady to fail, the sauce is still here, they just need to be more focused, and commit to more of a sp vision next time.

This review contains spoilers

"The human heart is no small thing. It can hold so much."

In the second act of Pentiment, Andreas, lost in a labyrinth of grief following the death of his young son from the plague, returns to Tassing with his young assistant Caspar. As the act progresses you are presented with several opportunities to define their relationship: you can be cold and borderline cruel, or neutral and indifferent, or you can be kind. You can care. His relationship with Caspar can provide you with an echo of the father that Andreas could have, should have been. Kindness, even at its most difficult, is always an option.

The Abbey burns. Andreas dies, and then he lives. And then, in the third act, you learn the consequences of your actions: if Andreas treated Caspar with kindness, he died trying to save him. If you were cruel to him, Caspar leaves Andreas to burn - he abandons you, but he lives.

I knew what would happen. I knew the consequences. I knew that if I wanted to save him from his fate, I would have to break his heart. Crush his spirit. I was determined. And even still, while replaying Pentiment for the first time since its release...I couldn't bring myself to do it. With every encouraging word, every smile, every act of compassion, I doomed him to his fate. It hurt, but it in the most bittersweet, beautiful way. Kindness, even at its most difficult, is always, always, an option.

I love this game. I loved it the first time I played it, and I loved it even more on the second go. Pentiment isn’t a perfect game, but it is the sort that sticks with you long after the credits roll. A gift, from beginning to end.

A tale of a game with great combat, beautiful world and superb world building marred by the usual suspects of AAA development: bad open world activities, bloated nonsensical gear system and a predictable storyline.

While i enjoyed my time a lot with it due to the incredible recreation of Hogwarts and the Wizarding World, it was also impossible to not notice the wasted potential in some places, specially after the beginning of the game seeing how good playing inside the castle is.

This just felt like a game that should have come out a long time ago. The original 2016 Detective Pikachu on 3DS was a flawed but charming mystery/adventure game with a clever premise, and if this game came out a year or two afterwards it probably would have gotten a similar reception. Instead the gameplay feels dated and the presentation is just not up to snuff. The plot isn’t bad per say but it also has the problem of the Detective Pikachu movie coming out in 2019 despite the movie adapting material that would be eventually used in this game, so the release timeline for this franchise is all out of whack. The last case in the game makes up for a lot of the slowness in the rest of the game but I just wish the game was more dynamic in structure, it would be nice to feel like you are solving something instead of being dragged along with no agency. I did like how it all wrapped up at least and it did retain some of the charm of the original, I just sadly think this missed its window by multiple years… if it had come out right before the movie it would have felt much more at home.

This review contains spoilers

Wow what a wild fucking ride, and really tough to talk about without delving into spoilers.So I'm going to have too here just a little. I'm gonna mark it as spoiler warning and try not to go too crazy, but some of this stuff just needs to be talked about to get a review out.

So, this is really a tale of three games, then a wild ending. The first part of this game is immaculate. A five out of five from me from act one, from the gameplay mechanics, to the atmosphere, to the exploration around the cabin. This is the best part of the game for me full stop, and leaves such a fantastic lasting impression.

Then you start to get the video bits intermixed in, which I loved, the backstory, and trying to piece together exactly what the hell is going on here.

Act 2, is the weakest act for me. I appreciate what it's doing as a bridge, and visually it looks awesome, love the pixel art, but I found it just fine, and the gameplay in that part isn't nearly as fun as the first or third acts, and I was mostly happy to be done that part fairly quickly. 3/5.

The third act is great. I definitely don't love it as much as the first, but exploring the map, and being able to choose your path, and again, exploring an area around you in between matches. Just great stuff. 4/5

Then the ending. Just bat shit insane, I love it. I don't fully understand it all, but it really uses the medium of video games effectively to create something special that would be hard to do otherwise.

Overall, I really dug this game a lot. While it's not perfect, and it can never quite hit the peak of the first act (besides the ending which is phenomenal) this is a game well worth your time, and a must play. Kudos to such a unique experience.