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

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 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.

Playing through FES in 2022 was one of my favorite gaming experiences I've had in quite some time. I guess I didn't realize quite how much until hearing about this remake. No hesitation in wanting to replay a long game like this, and in fact, genuine excitement for what was to come. If this version in 2009 was already one of my favorite games of all time, what would this end up being?

The answer is a truly unforgettable experience, that cements itself as one of my favorite games of all time, and Persona as one of my favorite series of all time.

Everything here is improved, from the improved music, to the combat, to the visuals, to the links, to the voice acting. Almost nothing feels off here. The story remains excellent and in my humble opinion, the best of the big three persona games, with some of the best side links in the series, and some of the best female characters. Makoto is the best protagonist in the series, and, while this game can't quite hit the monumental high and achievement of Persona 5 Royal (including the best OST soundtrack in any game) this game comes damn close to me.

The final boss fight is one of my favorite in all of gaming, and is done total justice here, the game is accessibile and easy if you want it to be (a huge improvement from FES in that way without modding it).

Overall, this game is a dream come true, is probably going to be my GOTY, and quite frankly, one of the crowning achievements for video games in general.

Can't wait to see what Atlus does dipping its toes into the Old Timey Mystical genre next!!!

Wow what a little piece of gaming history here. Look, I went into this game expecting to either drop or get filtered right the fuck out of it. This game is ancient after all and while the pixel remaster did have some modern boosts here, it's still dated, and I figured that this was gonna be a problem for me.

And to be honest I almost did. I got my ass handed to me in the Marsh Cave a few times, and I quit the game, uninstalled it, and was ready to move on. However, something pulled me back a couple hours, and I'm so so glad I did. This game is genuinely really great for it's time, and it's clear why this series has lasted for as long as it has from the very start.

Obviously the story here isn't anything too special, in its humble beginnings, but it's fun making up your own storylines as you go, with your party members. It's so cozy, and the music is wonderful. The combat is super simplistic but quite fun in a weird way, and even grinding is made to be enjoyable here.

This is where I embark on my journey of playing 1-6, and if this is the starting point, I can't WAIT to see what some of these future games have in store for me. Banger.

As an amateur game developer myself, I hold a great deal of respect for Studio Sai. I get anxious just mustering up the willpower to email indie publishers to try and get funding, and there they went (somehow) getting a big PlayStation feature. It's rather inspiring…

And now I say this with the mindset of an athlete set on surpassing those who come before…

I bet I can do better.

Someday 😂

Content wise, I actually found the game rather endearingly dorky and it even shows some real promise at moments. It's surprisingly well restrained for how big of a project it became and it doesn't feel unfinished or rushed.

It's just rough

The biggest, biggest problem for me was how they managed transitions. From my experience with the Unity engine, I suspect that they used individual "Scene" assets (Unity's concept of a level) not only to manage which environments were loaded, but also to "organize" each small section of the cutscenes. Or otherwise they tied their save system to a full scene reload because lordy that loading spinner has more screen time than the main character and yet it's only ever there for a second or two at a time. This turns almost every scene transition into a slow fadeaway and music cut which drops whatever atmosphere the scene was trying to build.

I have friends who say they didn't notice and enjoyed the game, so I can't say it ruins the game for everyone, but it was incredibly jarring for me.

Combat is also a bit rough, though it can also work fairly nice at times. The use of hit stop is excessive and some of the frequently used ability animations are far too long relative to the rest of combat. You're usually invincible during the animations in question, so it's not a matter of balance but responsiveness and flow. Input in general is a bit finicky feeling, though I think half of that at least is because of the hit stops eating inputs and requiring you to mash to use your moves reliably.

Other than that, it delivers what it promises on. So if it seems vaguely entertaining to you, either legitimately or as dating sim adjacent junk food, it's not the worst you could pick. If you have weeb friends, it may aslo be worth playing if only for the conversation and story around it.