opinions of this game are prolly gonna be dated fast since it has a patch incoming but i'll give my thoughts on what i personally played

strong presentation, great voice acting, really cool story and cast, fun setting. repetitive and boring gameplay (though boss fights are often cool) and really mind numbing dungeon crawling. game coulda dialed back the encounter rate, dialed up the exp gain and gotten more to the point with damage taken/given and i think it'd have been a real fun little gem. as it stands, just a decent game with obvious problems.

excellent game, monolith continues to be such a powerhouse for the switch.

fantastic and fun system of exploration, wonderful story, beautiful presentation, fast paced and addictive combat.

i will note that the whole chain attack system gets repetitive quickly and doesn't ever get that much more exciting, and some of the dialogue can be a little silly. there's a lot of scenes where characters get extremely airy and wordy, saying a lot without actually saying anything at all. combining that with the amount of unresolved plot points and it makes me feel like this 90ish hour story could've used its time better. i am sure the expansion will address some of this though.

wonderful video game with some typical jrpg pitfalls it does not really overcome.

not uchikoshi or spikechun's best work.

while you still have a memorable cast of characters, fun interactions and some cool story beats and twists like you would expect, thats the bare minimum for a visual novel.

when ai the somnium files released, it was a great return to form for uchikoshi and a cool step forward for the whole "adventure visual novel" shtick in general. this game offers more of the same thing, albeit with the same problems amplified and not much new to offer.

the new story is obviously less engaging than what the previous game offered, and some new characters feel rather redundant or pointless. issues i had with the previous game such as obnoxious QTEs and some obtuse puzzle solving are exponentially worse here.

stuff like the obnoxiously loud text advance SFX in the game made this whole experience border on incompetent for me.

still, its an uchikoshi adventure vn and that means there's still plenty to like, particularly for more longtime fans.

spikechun can do better and uchikoshi can do better, this game will prolly be the ztd of this franchise.

shockingly good. not to say its a masterpiece, but it is without doubt a great game, which is not what i was expecting at all.

looks beautiful, feels great to play, killer voice acting as per usual and some lovely music to round things out. the story is a fantastic expansion on three houses, while unfortunately not adding as much as it ought to given the nature of the game's existence. if you loved fe16, its more of that except (a bit) less messy, which is fine by me.

some unfortunate major caveats, however. the story does abruptly end without a conclusion (roughly 40 hour game for one playthrough so its not an issue of length), just reeks of not planning out development well. many issues with the original characters still remain too. claude still doesn't really have much to do with whats going on, edelgard is still a pretty messy character, but getting more to the point with everyone's actions and interactions alleviates this.

best fire emblem game ever if you like supports too. the new stuff with arval and sothis was really cool, but unfortunately brief.

given the letdown of fire emblem warriors and the messiness of three houses you'd expect a low point here, but its a must for returning fans and a great game in its own right.

about as good as any game platinum games ever made, albeit with some caveats.

the gimmicks are dialed up to 11 and some of the new combat mechanics don't play quite as nice as i'd like with series mainstay stuff. oftentimes the optimal solution to problems is effectively just outright negating some new mechanics.

still, very fun and rewarding. looks great, feels great, runs great.

idk if its better than bayonetta 2 tho lol

hate being mean, personally i've enjoyed quite a bit and i'm having a fun time, but objectively i don't think there is much of value at all in this video game.

besides the obvious unfinished state and downright laughable performance, the game itself is mediocre at best. ugly presentation, gameplay which is a direct downgrade from the previous game, storytelling which is pitiful compared to any of its contemporaries, and new features which are half-baked at best.

all of which is all the more disappointing since the game earlier this year was a pleasantly enjoyable surprise and a great step in the right direction, if long overdue.

rather than a bold leap, pokemon violet is game freak's geriatric lurch into modern gaming and yet another letdown from a development studio which often seems like it is capable of nothing but disappointments.

really awesome first time experience. a little bit less refined than your average fire emblem but such is life when you play an sfc jrpg from 1995 lol

amazing story, super fun gameplay once things open up in chapter 2, amazing presentation with lovely voice acting and music, altogether a complete package

some of the gameplay isn't as refined as i would like, the early game is rather simple and boring, and i was shocked by how bad the final boss was for a 2022 release, especially since a lot of care clearly went into refining other aspects of the game.

took me 50 hours on my first playthrough doing a bit of side content as well, likely just getting started.

absolute must for jrpg enthusiasts this year

this game would be half a point lower if not for how good the last few hours are lol. people make fun of kazushige nojima because of kingdom hearts and the compilation of ff7 shit, but he's genuinely still got it when he tries. i can't believe i'm saying this, but there is a good story somewhere in this chaos game.

outside of an out of nowhere fantastic final act, the game itself is (mostly) unfortunately mediocre. the combat is fun when it works, but that isn't nearly often as i would like. the extreme amount of jobs sounds fun on paper, but the lack of tight and coherent game design makes things feel sloppy and strategy tends to get cheese-y. it looks rough and it runs rough. as an actual rpg (and something of a remake of ff1), i was disappointed by the lack of exploring. towns, shops, open fields etc.

sometimes it works. the first fight against chaos incarnate is pretty spectacular and there are some cool lategame set pieces. the fanservice is fun too, going through a big fancy hd rendition of delkfutt's tower honestly justified this game's existence for me alone lol.

tldr; the game opens well and ends well, there's enough diamonds in a rough of mediocrity that its an overall positive experience in my opinion.

feel like i'm being a little mean, here's hoping the dlc gets a bumped up score from me.

a true low point for a wonderful franchise.

i am not sure where to even begin with this one. this game looks downright embarrassing in its presentation, the story is not only weak but retroactively mars the previous entry, the gameplay is some of the most awkwardly designed i've ever seen from the genre past act 2, and it released at a time when other games (hell even on the wii itself) were only getting bigger and better.

the story is so dreadful it almost goes without saying. micaiah, blood contracts, sephiran, what is there i can say which has not already been said? it's sad that this is the follow up to what is one of the franchise's most memorable entries.

if ya wanna know why nintendo people and rpg fans at large considered fire emblem to be not really worth looking at back in the day, this game would be the reason.

while recent games in the franchise can be divisive in their direction, it's important to remember what a genuinely bad video game looks like.

an essential classic which often goes underappreciated by gamers nowadays.

if you've ever enjoyed basically any video game cutscene, story, or character arc, you probably owe this game a thank you. obviously video game stories and characters existed before final fantasy 4, but only in the loosest sense of the terms. brand mascots and general sequences of events. in comes final fantasy 4 with shakespearean themes of love, jealousy, betrayal, grief, redemption etc coupled with sweeping digital orchestra and tight cutscenes, all of a sudden video games are a medium for storytelling.

besides the historical importance, final fantasy iv is still a killer game. gorgeous music, fun and fast-paced gameplay, memorable locations and bosses, pretty much still defines gamers expectations of what a jrpg ought to be.

the story has some obvious poorly aged pitfalls like the fake-out character deaths and a certain last-second reveal, but even these shortcomings have come to be characteristic of the genre because of this game.

this version of the game in particular deserves some bonus points for being quite possibly the most difficult mainline final fantasy game, with very punishing and involved boss encounters, at least moreso than what you usually expect in games like 6 and 7.

tldr; final fantasy iv is required reading for fans of the genre and for my money, the 3d version is still the best way to play it.